If you've ever endured a dull office job, you'll understand the unique form of sanctuary that a restroom can provide. Stressful presentation? Colleague badmouthing you behind your back? Disciplinary hearing arranged thanks to an abusive Twitter rant you posted about your boss? Then why not unwind on the throne, play Candy Crush, and literally get paid to take a shit.
Unfortunately, one man's paradise is another man's prison, and for a woman in Washington, DC, this statement of no particular origin revealed itself in a single, terrifying incident recently. Ronnie Perrin, a senior assistant at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had to stay at her office until 10 PM booking flights for her boss who was set to travel abroad. Now I can only imagine the sort of ass-hat who would order his middle-aged assistant to stay this late to organize his life while he schmoozes with billionaires and orders high-class escorts on company expenses (I imagine), but that's another other issue. He'll get his in hell.
Anyway, poor Ronnie was all set to leave when she decided to visit the ladies' room. Given that she was heading home, there was no reason to kill a few minutes of the working day by Snapchatting on the shitter, so she left her phone at her desk. Big mistake. As she emerged from the stall, she realized that the main door for the bathroom had been locked by the late night custodian, and she had no means of escape.
After first trying to smash her way through the wall to the men's room, then trying to go all Copson the door and kick it down, she eventually resorted to shoving 200 paper towels through the gap at the bottom in the hopes of signaling someone. Yet it seemed that no white flag was going to free Ronnie from this battle, and she did what any reasonable human person would do. She smashed through the ceiling like the executive assistant-game John McClane.
While she didn't crawl to freedom through an air vent, she did find a metal pole in the rafters. By using the pole as a chisel, she managed to break through the drywall adjacent to the door. She then stuck her hand through and opened it from the outside. It probably looked a bit like the scene in The Shining when Jack Nicholson hacks through that door, but in the offices of a nonoperative private charitable foundation as opposed to a haunted hotel—and much more hilarious.
It must have been tough. In her porcelain prison, Ronnie was probably close to drinking her own urine and eating her toes. After all, she was there for eight whole hours—about half of her average working day, it seems. But in all seriousness, we should really feel bad for Ronnie. As funny as it may be, she's just another hapless victim of a working culture that keeps us at the office even after the night watchman has punched out. Still, she did provide the best escape story since that guy cut his arm off after being trapped under a rock.
So next time you while away the final half hour of work RT'ing Jaden Smith as you sit on the toilet, spare a thought for Ronnie. Because when you wash your hands and head home at 5 PM, she's still got another five hours to go.
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