by Tyler Fransen

Men, we need to talk. It’s about cleanliness. Now look, I’m not your mother, but, as someone who has a mother, I feel it is important – nay, imperative – that I discuss a problem I have been noticing more and more in our gender’s bathrooms.

We are disgusting creatures. Every so often, I find myself in need of a trip to the porcelain gods, and what do I see? Horrors, horrors beyond your wildest imaginations. When I walk in there, do you think I enjoy the sight of whatever you didn’t flush away? Because I don’t. Satan might, but I don’t.

I don’t care if you’re in a rush because there is no excuse not to flush. I don’t care if you are sore, I don’t care if it’s a chore, I don’t care if you are single and I don’t care if you don’t mingle. Finish the job you started. Please do not quit because the last thing I want to see in the toilet is a pile of your… well, you get the idea.

And if you would humor me for but a brief moment, allow me to tell you the story of a very poor Chinese restaurant my father and I used to frequent (keyword: “used”), and how other people’s disgusting stupidity does the world a great disservice.

Picture, if you will, a small Chinese buffet, my father, myself, and a nice afternoon lunch. All is well; my father enjoys the shrimp, while I dabble in rice and kung-pao chicken. When my father gets up to use the facilities, I sit there finishing up, cleaning up a little and patiently waiting for my dad to return. Out he comes and says nothing to me, nothing that would draw any suspicion whatsoever. I later realized it was because he did not want to make a scene.

I get up to use the men’s room while dad pays the check. Little did I know I am walking into a death trap. For on the floor of this restaurant’s bathroom, completely innocuous to anyone else, behind the toilet’s plumbing is… take a wild guess. I’ll give you a hint, it is not supposed to be behind the toilet, but clearly someone missed that day’s lecture in Potty Training 101.

I wash my hands with such fervor and terror before I bolt out of that bathroom like a fire drill. As I get back to the restaurant I slow down and walk out to see my father standing there by the door. We get to the parking lot, our eyes catch and we say to each other, practically in unison, “Did you see that? We’re never going back there again.”

What was otherwise an average Chinese restaurant, with half-decent buffet items, suddenly and without warning became the most disgusting establishment I ever had the displeasure of entering. Much less eaten food at.

So please, if you are a guy, or girl for that matter (cleanliness is not a gendered issue), and you want to live in a world where restaurants are clean, people are healthier and everything smells a little nicer do the world and yourself a favor and clean up after yourselves.

Flush, wash your hands and keep everything in the confines of the thing that actually rids the world of your nastiness. Oh, and don’t pee on the seat either. I mean, come on, it’s not that difficult!