MEMPHIS, TN—Patrons of the men's restroom at Southwest Tennessee Community College have become wary of the increasing frequency and graphic nature of the signs left by maintenance in campus restrooms.
As with most public restrooms, people often do little to care for the cleanliness thereof, entrusting such work to the employees hired to regularly clean them. This diffusion of responsibility often leads to restrooms falling into disarray as restroom users leave water spills, casually toss paper towels onto the floor, and disregard soap spills, among other things.
One particular problem is that some users, perhaps for fear of the sanitation of the toilet seats, may place paper towels on the seats. However, these paper towels then commonly find their way into the toilets and get flushed, causing blockages, which are then left to the maintenance staff to address.
These troubling circumstances initially led to the staff's placing of a single sign in each stall, politely stating "Please do not place paper towels in the toilets. Please put them in the trash." However, after this measure ostensibly did not lead to fewer clogs, the signs slowly escalated in their tone and seriousness. The next one stated, "Paper towels do not belong in the toilets - they will create a clog. Please put them in the trash!"
The firm wording and exclamation point seemed likely to get the point across much better than the initial signage, but as fate would have it, the blockages continued. The maintenance crews were then forced to put up more and strongly worded signs. One from late November read, "Please, for God's sake, do not put any more paper towels in the toilet. I...I just can't anymore..." By early December, some of the stalls included diagrams with toilets that had paper towels crossed out, and one that had no paper towels with a smiley face. Still, whereas the visual aid was widely believed to be a perfectly reasonable step, the blockages continued.
At present, there are multiple signs, the most graphic of which states, "If I find one more [expletive] paper towel in a toilet I swear to God I will find you and bludgeon you to death in front of your family!!!!" and is signed by maintenance. It remains as yet unclear whether the new sign has had any effect on the use of paper towels to line toilet seats, but it is being noticed by many students.
Gary Blankenship (no relation), 20, a business major, shared his unease at seeing the sign as he made use of the facilities. "This is getting out of hand. I mean, I don't know if I feel safe anymore in one of those bathrooms. At this rate, it would not surprise me at all if maintenance started putting rat traps in the paper towel dispensers or something. Don't publish this, okay? I don't want to give them any ideas."
Another student, Todd Norton (no relation), 19, explains that he avoids the campus restrooms altogether now. "I always go before I get to campus and then do my best to hold it until I am all done with classes. I don't need to be there when a maintenance person comes to do a mid-crap inspection and lets loose on some indisposed dude. If I have to do my business, I go across the street."
Currently, the college is in talks with maintenance to simply replace all paper towel dispensers with air dryers, though members of the maintenance crew are not sure they want to "let them [paper towel flushers] get away with their crimes," and have made a counteroffer to install hidden cameras in all stalls. A vote is planned this Friday.