The Issue With Toilet Paper

I walked into the Women’s Restroom at work today and found myself utterly appalled at the conditions I was expected to work with: there was no toilet paper on the hanger.

There were several rolls on the floor in various positions and stages of unroll, and there were what appeared to be eight hundred million rolls stacked in an eye-pleasing arrangement on the back of the tank but on the hanger? Oh no. Upon the hanger was the lone shamed remnant of a roll long since past, that brown cardboard tube with bits of tissue stuck here and there in strategic places to remind it of the importance it once held in the Toilet Paper Hierarchy of Southern Antarctica.

I had to ask myself: how can this be? Aren’t women supposed to be the historical keepers of the fresh toilet paper roll? Aren’t we the ones that always complain that the men never change the roll out, that the bathroom experience just isn’t right somehow without a roll liberally wrapped with copious amounts of toilet paper hanging from the rack? What is it with the public restroom hang-up? Are we rebelling because we’re always changing the roll at home and don’t feel that we must change it at work because it should be somebody else’s job?

Not me, of course. Every time I find it empty I change it. Which is every time I go in. All three hundred and twenty times per day after my morning caffeine intake.

And, of course, nobody will ‘fess up to leaving the roll empty, a theory that was proved once more upon stepping outside of the restroom and finding the entire female population of the western hemisphere in the breakroom grazing upon the buffet set up for our inventory workers. I asked “Why am I the only one that ever changes out the roll? What gives, people?”

I received a flurry of protests and laughter. Apparently everyone here changes the roll every time they go in there and find it empty. Of course, no one followed me back to the restroom so that I might provide as evidence (with a broad flourish of arms and loud proclamation along of lines of “Wallah!” or “Observe!”) the hanger that would be considered perfectly functional were it to contain even a partial roll.

So. It must be the men that sneak into our restrooms when we aren’t looking and use all of our toilet paper up.

If Pete were here, I bet he would…. Well, he might…. I, uh…. OK, he’d probably think quite seriously about changing the roll before putting it back on the ground or the back of the tank or wherever he lifted it up from in the first place. After all, he would be in the Women’s Restroom and it’s kind of expected, you know?

But still.

Why am I always the one to change the roll?