martha thursday.

I felt a pressing need to go to the bathroom one morning, interestingly enough about 15 minutes after I had taken my last sip of my morning tea. I made my way to the company ladies' room, where five empty stalls (1 handicapped) awaited me. My usual stall, stall 3, had a pink sticky note on the outside door. Without reading the note, I assumed that particular toilet was out of order, so I turned to another stall. It was then that I realized that they all had pink sticky notes on them. There's construction going on in the building, so maybe that wasn't so unheard of to have 5 stalls out of order, but then I happened to read one of the notes. I read "Martha Monday/Tuesday" on stall 1. Then "Martha Wednesday." My regular stall was "Martha Thursday," which was right before "Martha Friday." The handicapped stall said "Sandra & Connie M -> F." I didn't have to look very closely at the notes to recognize Martha's handwriting.

Martha's a funny bird, a middle-aged tester, and the only other female who works on software here since Terrie left last week to work in insurance or mortgages or something else boring. We have the part-time receptionist (who apparently would be sharing the handicapped stall with me) and Sylvia, the office manager whose office lies in the inner sanctum of the suite with the higher-ups. I suspect there is a private restroom in there. So five stalls in the women's bathroom, 3 girls to use them. I imagined Martha making the notes, snickering, and being thoroughly disappointed that there were not six stalls so that she would not have to use the same one on Mondays and Tuesdays. I looked at all those little pink sticky notes and laughed.

Then I used Martha Thursday. Don't tell.