Potty Equality: Are you sh!tting me?

As many of my readers already know (ok both of my 2 readers), my law firm represents many restaurants and bars in the D.C. area. Well it turns out that New York City has recently passed a ridiculous law mandating that all restaurants and bars maintain a 2-to-1 ratio in favor of women’s restrooms, and D.C. may be considering the same action. Dear readers, I shat you not, this is an actual law. When the Today Show wanted someone to comment on the“bathroom equality bill” from the restaurant perspective, they called.... us. Now I know the Today Show is not Meet the Press, but why this is an issue of national attention at the same time as the war in Iraq, the Downing Street Memo, Darfur, and Lindsay Lohan’s herpes/crack addiction, I’m not sure. However since they are interviewing the law partner from my firm I had to come up with some good lines for lawyer #2 to use in his ultra-serious “interview.”

Just as an aside, I don’t know about the rest of you, but it seems to me that practically every time I have frequented any local bar in recent months, the line for the Men’s room has actually far exceeded the line for the women’s room. To add insult to injury, almost every girl who walks by seems to make some snide comment such as “oooh a line at the boy’s room, sucks to be you - hahaha.” Don’t they realize times have changed and there is always a line at the guy’s room now. I don’t know where this top-secret bar is located that is packed with mostly chicks (probably a martini bar), but every bar in this city seems to have a helmet majority. Those old-time medieval guys in the Molson’s commercial joking about a “maiden free enviroment,” “a jousting competition,” and “bayonet polishing” are probably located in Adams Morgan or Georgetown on a Saturday night. Anyway, they called and asked us for an interview on this ever-important subject, and I was asked to supply some quotes for our national t.v. exposure. Media whoring is always fun.

At first I suggested that this law would cause restaurants to tear down Men’s bathrooms or build less Men’s bathrooms in order to comply with the redonkulous law. This is the approach taken by universities who cut wrestling and other men’s sports in order to have equal numbers of women’s and men’s bathrooms. Next, I questioning the phrasing of “bathroom equality” when the results would clearly be unequal. Non of these ideas were sticking. The next idea floated was to make all the bathrooms similar to those unisex marvels at Mei N Yu. However, the Ewoks running around on the rope ladders and bridges at Mei N Yu would probably scare away all the customers, and lawyer #2 shot down this idea. Instead, the best idea that I located was to stop women from attending the bathroom in pairs.

If women flew solo on their trips to the bathroom that would almost certainly ease the need for the double capacity of women’s rooms. (This would also eliminate the awful seinfeld-esque jokes from hack comedians on comedy central: “you ever wonder why women go to the bathrooms in pairs, what exactly are they doing in there, gi gi gi guh”.) Why not suggest to the Today Show that half of the women waiting in line for the bathroom are just doing their respective girl-friend duties and had no need to adjourn to the water-closet in the first place. Under this proposal, if women shirked their friend duties and told their friend to go it alone, the whole idea behind the law would be moot. I never expected this suggestion to stick, but what do you know, lawyer #2 says he ran with it in his interview. Moral of the story: tivo Good Morning America on Sunday to see if they run with our suggested solution: ladies just go to the bathroom on your own.


What do you fools think? And this whole article was not a just a fishing expedition to get my first female commenters, ok maybe it was.