Sir, You Can't Poo There

I would like to talk a bit about expectations. Expectations are all around us. They help form the worldview that we all hold. Now obviously they are no constant. Two neighbors can have diametrically opposed sets of expectations. It depends on what you value and where you are in your life. Let me tell you about some of my expectations.

For Our World and Country:

• They will clone dinosaurs (read here), Jurassic Park will come true, and Michael Crichton will look like a fucking genius.

• Seals will one day become the dominant species on earth making Kurt Vonnegut look like a fucking genius.

• The Chicago Cubs (although I am a fan) will probably never win a World Series.

• One day we will find out the Vikings actually got to the moon first.

Awww shit!

• Public transportation is never enjoyable.

This is one example of the type of person you see on public transportation. 

• When aliens bother to stop here, they’ll pull an upper decker in the White House and flip the bird as they fly away from Earth screaming Good luck, assholes!

• When the USA goes bankrupt, I fully expect I’ll have to eat at least one ferret.

• Homeless people will be turned into food (it’s only a matter of time people) but Charlton Heston won’t be around to tell us the better.

Well, what did you think we were going to do with every dumbass who shot themselves because we let them have guns?

• Pat Flaherty will never pay me the money he owes me because he is an incompetent, cheap bastard.

So why are we talking about expectations? Please allow me to explicate my stimulus. In January I was given a job at the company I was temping for. The company has five offices. Two on the South Side of Chicago, one downtown, one in Springfield, Illinois, and one in the nation’s capitol.

I work at the one on the South Side in an area not considered to be the greatest neighborhood. I must say that my expectation working in the neighborhood has been completely torn down. It was probably my suburban upbringing that skewed my vantage point. I don’t know if I was expecting an active war zone, but it really has proven to be anything but that. I enjoy going to work everyday.

One of the aspects of my job, however, is that I need to move around the city to different locations. I spend a lot of time at the downtown office and I considered this to be a perk. When I go downtown, I feel like an actual member of society. The hustle bustle of the working world envelops me. Delivery trucks zoom goods from office to office and throughout the country and world. The city is an active machine; you can almost hear the gears turning below the streets.

If you have a moment, people watching is quite fun. One constant is that everyone is walking fast and talking on their cell phones because they are obviously very important. Personally, I like to walk obnoxiously slow for two reasons. First, I know I’m not important so I’m not going put up any facades. Second, I like to mess with the important people and get in their way a little bit. I figure it’s a good way to bring them back down to earth.

So with all of these upstanding citizens of great importance and class, you would understand my surprise when I walked into the bathroom at work and found a wonderful fecal gift. Someone defecated in the urinal.

Dramatization of the event

My first thought was Where is my phone? This needs to be documented. Unfortunately (or fortunately for you readers), I had left it in the office. So I did my business and returned to the office.

Now I must say this fecal vandal is obviously a professional. I’ve never entered that bathroom without being accompanied by three or four other men. It’s a busy shared washroom on a busy floor. How he got away with that is beyond me. Maybe he was prairie dogging and all the stalls were occupied. Maybe it was this guy’s last day and he is incredibly passive aggressive and talented with his sphincter. 

Either way my expectations were shattered that day. It became very apparent that even at the height of culture and civilization, we’re all just mildly well trained animals. And every now and again, the monkey rears its ugly head.