Malbela.com

The new IT building doesn’t face the rest of campus. That’s just one thing you notice when you walk up to it. It’s facing away from the main part of campus, toward the still unfinished bookstore. I sat in the computer lab this morning, editing an ad for the paper and watched the rain slide down the walls and into the vacant windows of the building.

The IT building is nice. There is lots of light colored wood, chrome, and polished steel. Every computer in the building is black with large monitors. The floors are all either tiled or nice neutral carpets. There are lots of windows.

The whole place has the feeling of a major call center that hasn’t installed the phones yet. Sort of a ‘Sweden Meets Bangalore’ type of feeling.

But there’s a lot of things wrong with this new building, as there are with many new buildings. The bricks on the outside weren’t up to snuff and large sections have had to be repeatedly ripped out and redone. There stairwell seems to hide, most people can’t even find it, stuck in one back corner. There is still scaffolding around the outside of building, blocking the view. The roof leaks in every classroom on the 5th floor. Perfect for the multimedia lab.

Then there are the bathrooms.

The bathrooms are something special. There are five stalls in the men’s rooms. FIVE. Women won’t understand this, but men are going “Five? Why so many!?”. Men’s rooms usually get a couple of stalls, one of them handicap. A couple of urinals. That’s it. 5 stalls and several urinals is strange to men. We’re used to getting the… (sorry, I’ve got to)… shitty end of that stick.

What’s even more amazing about these restrooms is that everything is done with electronic sensors. There’s no need to dirty your hands touching faucets or handles. The toilets and urinals flush when the sensor is unblocked, the faucets turn on when you put your hands underneath. Seems like it’d be a nice clean restroom… right?

This morning I walked into this nice new bathroom & pushed open the first stall door. Wrapped in plastic like a christmas present. This is the sanitation staff’s sign for “Will react like Old Faithful if flushed”.

I pull the door closed again.

Next stall.

Someone has urinated all over the seat, the wall, the toilet paper holder, the floor. And they didn’t flush.

Wait… they didn’t flush? How…

I don’t question it. Next Stall.

… Oh.
… My.
… God.

What happened? This is disgusting! Even thinking about it hours later makes me a little ill. But how did they get away without flushing?

There are some sort of Gastronomic Gymnastics going on in there. The Swedish Judge must be involved somehow. That’s the only way I can figure out they were able to use the facilities and not flush. I normally have a problem keeping the thing from flushing while I’m using it. Breathe a little and suddenly you’re on a bidet.

Well, however it works out… I hope we won the gold medal.

Oh, and consider more fiber.