Last Tuesday I was at work and, is bound to happen when you're working in the real world instead of a TV show, I had to use the restroom. If I'd known that going to the bathroom might have placed my life in danger, I'd have held it. I didn't have to go that bad.

No, this isn't going to be one of those stories. As you can see, Yahoo's facilities are quite clean. Nothing to be afraid of.

Or so I thought.

Okay, back to the matter at, er, hand. I walk to the men's restroom, pick a stall (which, like the nature of my business, was Number 2), and I latch the door behind me. Bip-bip! Hmm? What was that? I thought the restroom was empty (not that it matters). Bip-bip! I look over (I haven't sat down yet (TMI?) ) and see a cellphone in a leather case, double-bipping every Bip-bip! 6 seconds or so. It's just sitting there on top of the stainless steel toilet paper dispenser like a child who, when lost at the mall, has the good sense to stay put but lacks the maturity to keep the small plaintive whimpers inside.

I lean over the phone and take a look at the display. It's not ringing but it sounds like it has a really important message, and the sender isn't willing to settle for just a 'once every 5 minutes' beep and tickle. Taking a look at the display, I see it's all in Spanish and, of course, there's no signal in the middle of a stall in the middle of a bathroom in the middle of a building in the middle of the reclaimed South-bay dotcom wetlands.

That's fine. I get to be helpful! I'll take the phone out with me when I'm done and I'll send out an email to the floor and see whose phone it is. But wait. What if they come back while I'm going? The strange taint that adheres to the emergency toilet paper roll, passed under a stall from a savior to a stallgoer in need of saving, could be nothing compared to the cooties that would infect a cellphone passed from an unseen stranger's unknown hands under the stall door to the owner. This is not the kind of dirt the leather case is designed to repel. Worse, unlike a 'holy roll,' the phone would stay with the owner, if anything, holding on all the tighter for its recent traumatic experience. No. Clearly I couldn't leave it in the stall while I went (and not because I felt it would be staring at me, tittering all the while. Like I said, it's not that kind of story. While we're on the subject, why to they call it 'going'? You don't start going until you're already in the restroom, and you certainly don't leave the restroom until after you've gone. Ahh, linguistics. But, as ever, I digress...).

So clearly the thing to do Bip-bip! is put the phone on the counter by the sinks, then go, then take it with me back to my cube when I leave.

Unlatch the door, pick up the phone, put it on the counter, come back, latch, clean the seat with a sheet (YTMI!), and do my business.

Someone walks in. Is it them? No. To the urinal they go. They finish up, Bip-bip! use the sink furthest from the phone and leave, ignoring the phone (which, in retrospect, they probably assumed was mine).

I realize now (I'm referring to the 'now' of me writing this story, as opposed to the more distant 'now' that I'm relating in the story or your own personal 'now' assuming you're still reading this story, bravely trusting that this really isn't a scatological tale (or, alternatively, becoming rapidly frustrated that your own odd fetish isn't being serviced by my tale (OCTMI!) ) ), I say I realize now that the reader might be getting the wrong impression, that I'm one of those people who has to stop what they're doing whenever someone else walks in, as though the sound of bowels being voided in a restroom stall is as shocking or shameful as a muffled orgasm coming from an office stairwell (NTMI). No, I'm not one of those people, though there seem to be a lot of them here at Yahoo! (the 'don't go (void) till they go (leave)' type, as opposed to the sex in stairwells type, which I haven't encountered, though a coworker told me about a pair (I hesitate to presume they were a 'couple') who was(*) dismissed after being caught having sex in a conference room after everyone else had evacuated for a fire drill). It leads me to wonder what, given how often I see (err, sense) these introverted excrementers, happens when, inevitably, two of these people are in the bathroom at the same time? Defecation Detente? Anyhow, now that I've embarrassed myself further by trying to prove that I'm not a freak (and succeeded in demonstrating that I'm very much a freak of a different sort) (Err, meaning the kind that analyzes people in bathrooms too much, not the kind that has sex in stairwells (oh forget it. I'm getting back to the story now.) )

Right. Where was I? Yeah; so number 1 leaves, a few seconds pass, and another guy walks in to the bathroom. He walks straight to the phone on the counter, picks it up, turns to leave, and on his way out, pulls out a walkie-talkie, pushes the button and says,

"I found another one."