As I've grown older, my gag reflex seems to get more and more sensitive.  I think it started in my late teens when I was always getting bronchitis, so I would wring out my throat (with unladylike audio) to the point of obsession to keep the yuckies from clogging my precious, virgin respiratory system.  Just ask Hubby; the guy watched childbirth thrice and nothing I do grosses him out more than the sound of incessant horking in the morning.

This gag reflex thing has come equipped with a superhuman sense of smell.  The littlest peeps from food, distant trash cans, faint sweat marks now come screaming up my nostrils and I feel like I'm in that mid-pregnancy torture where even your baby-daddy stinks like hell.

Now, it's no longer a secret that I'm struggling to find the ideal work environment, but now on the list of criteria is a clean restroom.  One that doesn't tempt you to bend over to hurl rather than sit down and take care of business.  It's bad enough that my urinary system has chronic stage fright.  Even when I gotta go bad, once my body feels the presence of another next door, everything clams up and the silence is deafening.  She thinks I'm taking a crap.  And so you apply enough force to coax out a tinkle but not enough to squeeze out a mortifying blurt that would support their suspicion.

It appears that the office that I work at (and the restrooms in them) is visited by cleaners only twice a week.  So sometimes my senses are most unpleasantly surprised by evidence that you felt the need yesterday to sit way back on the seat before you wiped.  Seriously, who does that?  And who, my friends, doesn't do the triple check before re-opening the door, confirming that everything has in fact disappeared in the magical whirlpool?  I can't even imagine taking care of the serious business at the workplace.  At every job I had, I had a designated location in a separate building for emergencies (one of them invited me to immerse myself in European charm and so I did). Stall walls stop millimeters shy of your bare cheeks and, in my case this past summer, you do anything unbecoming of a lady and your 3-minute neighbour need only glance down and see your turquoise toenails to know who to snicker about in the lunchroom.  Sometimes I even sit like I'm posing for a portrait, with my knees and toes angled away to avoid identification.