Obscured View

Yuck.

No other phrase fits appropriately when dealing with the hygiene issues that can assault one upon entering most of the men’s bathrooms in any game development establishment.  The level of foul things or just simply unhygienic things I’ve been a hapless victim of or passive witness to is fairly staggering over the course of 16 years.

Walking into a washroom in a large development studio is a game.  Not a fun one, really.  It’s kinda like a lottery you DON’T want to win.  It’s that consolation prize that’s worse than winning anything at all.  It’s that image you’re not going to be able to get out of your head for hours afterward.  It’s that display of bodily function that I don’t need to be reminded that all my co-workers partake in… some with a lot more zeal and obvious enthusiasm than others.

It’s the artifact of an act that makes you wonder if you should ever shake anyone’s hand ever again… and if you do, sanitize yourself immediately following it.

There appear to be a few categories of players in this tragic tale.  Let’s break ‘em down, but be aware that you can combo / stack categories for any one person, which some unfortunately do.

• The Unsanitary
  Typically these types of restroom users simply don’t wash their hands after doing anything.  They relieve themselves, and walk out, likely directly to a client meeting, back to typing away at their keyboard, or picking things up in your office and playing with them.  I guess it’s just too much of a hassle to wash.  Besides, they showered this morning, right?  Well, maybe.  That’s for another entry.
• The Moistener
  These are the folks that think running water over their hands for 3 to 5 seconds somehow certifies their hands as free and clear of any and all residuals.  Sometimes they use paper to dry afterward, and sometimes they don’t.  These are like the people that really believe that the dry-wash car wash foam is just as good as water and car wash liquid.  Yeah, keep dreaming.
• Badgers
  Some places (like EA) have badges with the employee’s picture and name squarely on them.  These are usually clipped to the pants, which of course go down below stall wall level when people are doing their business.  There you are, seeing the goofy, smiling face of a co-worker staring at you from next door while you hear the sounds of their colon explosively expelling that macho double-del beef burrito they had earlier.  Ah, bliss.  Later, when you see them in the hall, try really hard not to replay those sounds in your head.  It doesn’t work.  Fortunately, unsanitary badgers make it easy to know who’s hand you should avoid shaking.
• The Conversationalist
  Seriously, how anyone got into the habit of doing this is beyond me.  Who tries to have conversations while someone is taking a shit?  It’s kinda hard to discuss scheduling, projects, philosophy, or anything at all while you’re hearing things being expelled.  Libraries and bathrooms have a certain understood and unspoken rule: talk as little as possible.
• The Gift-giver
  It’s like they’re leaving you something they’re proud of and want to share with the world.  Who knows, maybe mom took pictures of their “accomplishments” when they were toilet training and put it on the fridge (next to that picture of summer in Cancun, oh, wasn’t he just adorable?), but it’s really not what I or anyone else need to see… EVER.  I don’t want to know that you had a taco salad for lunch (with corn!), nor what made your sh*t green (green?! seriously!).  I don’t need to see corn, or peanuts, lettuce, how explosive it was up the sidewalls, nor if it’s floating or not, but oh boy you left it anyway, and now I have to enjoy it.  Thanks, fucker.  Does your wife / girlfriend have to deal with this at home?  Likely not, because you probably don’t have one after a few of these left around.
• The Footloose (and fancy-free)
  Here’s one that I just don’t get.  Barefoot… at a urinal.  Barefoot?!  Have you ever looked down at the random spills and misses around any urinal in any public place?  It’s typically a nice mix of liquids from at least two orifices, plus the glorious occasional pube that finds its way into the broth.  Now step barefoot in that.  Wiggle your toes around in it.  Feel the coolness of it all, the mingling of discarded wastes and abandoned follicles.  Yeah, that’s nice, isn’t it?  What’s worse is that just like walking through a house with wet feet, you can track the perpetrator back out of the bathroom for a bit… not that you want to.  At least it tells you which area of the building you’re going to need to have sterilized.
• The Cellphoner
  This is kinda like the talker, but since they’re on a cell phone, they’re usually LOUDER and MORE ANNOYING.  I can’t imagine what’s keeping the person on the other end of the phone on the line.  After hearing the echoing or any other sounds coming from my phone’s speaker, I’d hang up.  Since this is also a game company we’re talking about, there are rarely any conversations that are worth listening to.  At least with a quality fight with a girlfriend or an argument with a partner in a deal going south you can get some drama out of it — screaming, irrational dialogue, bizarre swearing chains, threats — but with gamers, not really.  Most of them are mundane, the kind of conversations that you had as a teenager when neither you or the person you’re talking to had any idea that you could have an idea.  Just tweet the fucking thing and shut the hell up, OK?
• The Commentator
  Sometimes amusing, sometimes not.  Depends on your mood, I have to admit.  These types comment on their progress through the crap-taking or pissing process.  They encourage their “little buddy” while pissing or give you a blast-by-blast account of their last meal’s explosive exit from their colon.  When it’s funny, it’s like an audio recreation of a cowboy riding a bucking bronco, but instead of a bronco it’s a guy who’s having explosive diarrhea… and loving every minute of it.
• The Exploder
  I don’t think I have to explain this one, nor will I try.  If you’ve seen this, you know that words simply fail.  The horror.
• The Deodorizer
  Now you must be thinking that this entry is about someone that’s the complete opposite of the types mentioned before.  Nope.  These are not the ones that deodorize… these are the ones that need deodorizing.  In every office of more than about 50 game developers, there’s usually at least one that falls into this category.  They just reek.  They don’t shower often and they rarely use deodorant of any kind.  These types are not fun to be next to, be it in a stall or a row of urinals, because your gag reflex tends to constrict the muscles you need in order to expel things from your body in the proper manner.  They do however rapidly facilitate things coming out of other orifices that are usually reserved for when you’re really drunk or food poisoned.  The plus with deodorizers is that they’re also usually unsanitaries and sometimes footloose as well.  A 3-hit combo at least.
• The Elvis
  They go in to take a crap and end up falling asleep, sometimes snoring.  All hail the king!

So that’s my list so far.  It’s not fair to say that this kind of stuff is limited to just the game developer environment.  You see a lot of this no matter where you are, but it just so happens that the type of people that work in game development seem to forget basic things like hygiene.

You could say that developers in bathrooms brings out the worst in them… usually while they’re bringing out the worst of their lunch.

Har-har!