No Peeing at Work

In light of the working environment changes foisted upon those of us who work at my school, I've come to the conclusion that we are essentially a Urine-Free Workplace.  While this sounds like something that would be great- I mean, who wants urine in the workplace?- let me stand up and say that it ain't all that and a bag of chips, ya'll.

What do I mean?  Well, most people don't realize that unlike almost every other job in the country, when a teacher needs to use the bathroom, he or she can't just go.  Nope.  Walking out of a classroom of 20-30 bright eyed youngsters to take care of such a minute personal issue is against the rules, more or less.  It was particularly enjoyable when I was 63 months pregnant and had traded my usual class for a pack of rabid baboon/howler monkey hybrid creatures.  

So what do we do?  Well, we have a planning period... sometimes.  But that can take place anywhere between 10am and 3pm, and I don't know about you but I just don't plan the urge with that much clockwork precision to know that "I shall pee at 2:15, but not before and not after."  We have a lunch break.....sort of.  4 days a week, we get our kids through the serving line, then rush back to the lounge to scarf whatever leftovers or Lean Cuisine we remembered to pack that morning (or we bum snack food off a certain follicularly challenged but very entertaining and lovable 3rd grade teacher). The other day, we're required to do lunch duty, to eat our own lunch standing up and walking around the cafeteria opening milk cartons and silverware and coaxing reticent 5 year olds to take "just two more bites." No bathroom break that day.

And now, in the wake of Hurricane Irene, with nearly a quarter of a million local residents still without power (including 12 schools, but apparently not the important ones), we're heading back to work tomorrow after losing essentially all of the time we had to prepare our rooms for orientation and "Meet the Teacher" on Thursday. I suppose we're drafting the local woodland creatures and elven folk to magically construct bulletin boards, label hundreds of nametags, bus tags, cubby tags, etc...., unpack and organize all our possessions and supplies and plan our teaching for the first week of school.  Because there ain't no way a single human being in a building with no electricity and therefore no air conditioning in the Virginia August heat can make those things happen before 10am on Thursday.  Ain't nobody, ain't nohow.


How does this relate to peeing, you may ask?  SIMPLE.  In our old, moldy, carcinogenic building, every staff bathroom is in an unventilated windowless room.  Have you ever wanted to know what it's like to be blind and have to pee?  Yeah, me neither.  But evidently our school district has decided that our staff needs that little lesson in tolerance, so in the event we have not fully trained our bladder to go a full 10 hours without needing to empty itself before exploding (and since some of the women I work with are really teeny tiny, I can't imagine they have elephant bladders or anything) I think we shall all Pee Blind tomorrow.

Of course, one way they've chosen to circumvent this pesky personal health and hygiene issue is by making us do the manual labor of setting up our rooms in this unairconditioned building.  Perhaps rather than peeing out our excess liquid, we shall excrete it through quarts and buckets of sweat.  Then we will both smell good AND have beautifully decorated, organized and stocked classrooms!  Yay!

 So, friends, I would like to petition the higher powers to Bring Back Urination in the Workplace.  We promise to put it in the appropriate receptacles.

The other option I see would be to discontinue our status as a Velociraptor-Free Workplace.  Being chased by giant lethal lizards would be exciting and take our minds off the need to, you know, go.