The Toilet Blues

With the Olympics in Beijing, everyone expects a post about toilets.  Here's mine.  At my company, we had nice, normal white urinals of a fairly normal design.  They were the same as any urinals anywhere and they worked quite well.

I also own a lot of pants and I try to keep them neat and clean (the segue is not as jarring if you read on).  Recently, I began to notice that all my pants were starting to get a couple of small blue dots at the mid-to-lower thigh region.  I couldn't figure out where they were coming from.  They washed out just fine but I still couldn't trace the source.

Recently (as well), the company had been getting some complaints about the smell in the bathroom.  Being quite responsive, they started putting those small, blue urinal cakes in the urinals (see where I'm going with this?).  Great idea, no more smell.  Unfortunately, they didn't include the all important "urinal cake holder" that you see in the west... It's really important.

Urinals are designed to avoid splashing and spraying (especially back onto the user).  It's a solved problem.  They are designed with smooth curves and no hard corners.  Unfortunately, by adding the urinal cakes without their holders, we've now got some hard corners that seem to promote back-spatter.  Add the fact that their blue, and you've got the makings of a real problem (at least for me).  The urinal cake holders are designed to slightly elevate the cake and dissapate the force of the liquid (thus reducing the spatter that could cause problems).

I'm currently contemplating how to raise this issue to my company in the most formal manner possible without opening myself up to ridicule and shame.  It surely isn't possible that I'm the only one that's had a problem with this, is it?

P.S. - I've managed to fix the problem for myself by changing my ... uh ... behavior and positioning.