Bathroom strategies

[Pekka]

Of course! You could just fart without going inside anyway. I mean that's just being polite to begin with and giving you some privacy. So definitely it's a big factor, not being a weirdo like that. Like I said earlier, if I see you doing weird stuff in the bathroom, I'll make sure that I'm watching you and making you feel uncomfortable, as if you're a freak even though we all do it.

Because then I know you don't have a strategy and basically that means you're a douche - and that justifies me staring at you.

[DrSpike]

Tough bathroom love is the only way they will learn.

[Zoid]

Originally posted by Pekka
Of course! You could just fart without going inside anyway. I mean that's just being polite to begin with and giving you some privacy. So definitely it's a big factor, not being a weirdo like that. Like I said earlier, if I see you doing weird stuff in the bathroom, I'll make sure that I'm watching you and making you feel uncomfortable, as if you're a freak even though we all do it.

Because then I know you don't have a strategy and basically that means you're a douche - and that justifies me staring at you.

That's why I do my weird stuff outside the bathroom, safety in numbers and all that...

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by Pekka
and I'm just ... my altruistic agenda is to just simply share my knowledge and hopefully learn something from you and as a result we all are better bathroom players. Who wouldn't want that? THis is a public service, I should actually get paid to do this.

You mean Apolyton isn't already paying you to post? I thought since they pay me they pay everyone. Ah, well, seems it is not so.

[Pekka]

Today I've already had another incident. I think it's the coffee. I don't usually drink coffee, so now I've been getting coffee every morning, so that makes me have some upsets in the stomach area. Anyway, so I had to go to another fart-a-thon and as usual, no one was in the bathroom. So anyway, I noticed a weird little thing. I went to the 4th booth, as you do (people with sound strategies) and basically started blasting the truth. So after it was over, I figured WAIT A MINUTE! Maybe someone IS here. Because if people are doing number 2, they sometimes go quiet when someone new comes in. I don't know why. They realize it's quiet so everyone can hear their little, "NHGGGGHS!" and so forth, so they go quiet when you enter the bathroom.

I had a bad feeling about this. I might have been betrayed by a shy pooper going silent on me. So after I gave the performance of the week, I had to go quiet and try to listen if I was being manipulated into thinking I was there alone. Turns out I wasn't. But paranoia set in for a while. This is the case in many bathroom war stories. But even paranoid people have enemies.

I think it's awesome how the paranoia set in that the second thought was, "man, I got to post this on Poly, I know they'll appreciate the war stories!!"

[Zoid]

Don't you check if the other stalls are occupied before you blast away? So much for your strategies... How can I ever trust anything you say after this?

[Pekka]

I never check. I mean I see if they're open or not, so I get the overview and I can assume they're free. That's the point... if not, I could just inspect all the stalls and then choose where to go and why wouldn't I do that? There's no strategy involved in that. Don't act like a douche, Zoid...

[Zoid]

Well, I just think that a proper strategy should involve an assessment of the enemy lines. Can't you tell from the outside if the stall is occupied or not?

[DrSpike]

Strategy shocker

Today was my first day back to work. Perhaps perturbed by the large pile of work with my name on it, when it came time for the first work toilet break of 2008 I committed the cardinal sin of not following my normal strategy. I went to stall one with the result that there was a huge and rather pungent skid mark at the bottom of the bowl.

This illustrates two points I feel are crucial here:

1) Once a successful strategy has been developed you MUST follow it - no exceptions. Otherwise the gods of bathroom strategies will see your arrogance and punish you for it.

2) Strategies based on checking rather than game theory are doomed to failure. The skid mark was not actually visible from outside the booth. I feel this has been overlooked in the discussion so far, and just underlines the importance of a strategy.

[Pekka]

DrSpike, we all fail sometimes. But at least you do have a strategy and I guess you learned a lesson today. I'm very proud of you You're a champion, don't worry about it. It is these moments that defines us.

[Sirotnikov]

Skid marks on the bowl are not really scary.

You can flush several times or just pee them off.

[Pekka]

Yeah, just flush 100 times. Nature thanks you for doing it!

[VetLegion]

The office I work in is a converted flat. It has only one general purpose bathroom (no stalls, just a toilet seat, a shower/bathtub and a sink) and nine people use it every day.

It's really crowded, let me tell you that! It doesn't require only strategy to survive in this environment, it takes COURAGE.

[Pekka]

Oh that's just nasty

[Zoid]