The Great Restroom Policy Scandal

I was reorganizing my file cabinets a few days ago, when I came across article clippings from my days as a reporter for a local newspaper. I decided it was time to purge the files and only hang onto my columns and the really interesting stories I covered.

My home office floor was littered with piles of newspaper as I sorted, separating the wheat from the chaff, and then I spotted it, a column I wrote about three months after I started working for the paper. I started grinning the moment I recognized the headline. It brought back some fun memories.

One of my neighbors at the time was a busybody who took life much too seriously. She called me at the paper’s office, breathless with outrage, and claimed she had uncovered a horrible injustice being perpetrated in the local school system.

I practically swooned. I got chills. I even drooled. I had my own “Deep Throat” and was about to investigate my first scandal.

I insisted on an exclusive, of course. I urged her to tell all and she did. She had in her possession a copy of an official memo to all school system employees from the facilities coordinator. The memo contained the school system’s revised restroom policy.

According to the memo that she read to me over the phone, the revised policy involved the following.

A trip bank will be established limiting to twenty the number of trips to the restroom each employee will be permitted per month. The restroom doors will be locked and entrances to each restroom will be equipped with computerized voice print identification stations. Two voiceprints will be taken from each employee, one normal and one under stress. When an employee uses up his allotted trips for the month, he will be denied entrance to the restrooms for the remainder of that month. In addition, the restroom stalls will be equipped with timing devices limiting usage to three minutes, at which time stall doors will fly open automatically.

BUSYBODY NEIGHBOR: What do you think of that?

ME: [trying not to laugh] I think it’s a joke.

BUSYBODY NEIGHBOR: It sure is a joke. Can you imagine anyone treating employees that cruelly?

ME: [still trying not to laugh] No, you don’t understand. It’s not real. It’s a gag. Think about it. Do you actually believe our school system can afford computerized voice print identification? That’s the kind of high tech they have at the Pentagon. Somebody wrote that memo as a joke.

BUSYBODY NEIGHBOR: [not yet convinced] But it’s on school stationery. It looks real. It even sounds official.

ME: [still trying really hard not to laugh] Why don’t you bring it to the office and I’ll have a look at it.

She brought her copy of the infamous memo to the newspaper office, eager to have me authenticate it. I read it again [still trying so extremely hard not to laugh], and I managed to persuade her that it was indeed someone’s idea of a joke. She felt a little foolish, tossed the memo into the wastebasket, and then we both laughed about it. Good thing. I didn’t know how much longer I could keep from laughing.

After she left the office, my laughter died and I wanted to cry. There went my first opportunity to investigate a scandal and quite probably my one big chance to win the Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism. All my drooling went for naught.

It occurred to me that I could ease the sting of my disappointment over not having a scandal to expose by having a bit of fun at the school superintendent’s expense. My next assignment involved covering the groundbreaking ceremony for an addition to the high school and interviewing the school superintendent afterward. I plucked the memo from the wastebasket.

ME: [approaching the superintendent at the end of the ceremony] I just uncovered a major scandal brewing in your administration, sir.

SUPERINTENDENT: [looking aghast] Scandal? What scandal?

ME: [wearing the same expression as Geraldo Rivera about to enter Al Capone’s underground vaults] How do you explain this? [I handed him the memo.]

SUPERINTENDENT: [staring at the memo] That’s my stationery. What’s this? Restroom policy? Facilities Coordinator? We don’t have a facilities coordinator. [He read on and his mouth began to curl into a smile.] This is a joke. [He was laughing by the time he finished reading.] I wonder who wrote this. Where did you get it?

Naturally, I did what any good reporter would have done under similar circumstances. I sought the protection of the First Amendment and refused to reveal my source. I had to protect her identity. It was entirely possible that little busybody might actually uncover a real scandal some day.