The Female Urinal Cake?

At our Bar review location the janitorial staff seems to be reacting negatively to the students.

I have come to this conclusion because they have left what must be urinal cakes on the floor, under the sinks in the ladies room. Not only do these items have the unholy pink complexion of a urinal cake, but they emanate that pungent smell of chemicals meant to cover the smell of pee but actually smells worse than pee. Like weed, urinal cake smell is unmistakable. And revolting.

This incident reminds me of this idiot I used to work with whose Turkish girlfriend put stick-ups -which may I remind you, you're supposed to put in a trashcan- in his car. Consequently his car smelled like a trash can, due not only to the stick-ups but also his special funk, and it always made me slightly queasy to be in or around. She was apparently unfamiliar with the car air freshener. Similarly, urinal cakes in the female bathroom seem at the least a misuse of materials, and at most unnecessary.

Honestly, I know that if I were ever pregnant/suffering from food poisoning one whiff of the bathroom I must use would cause me to empty the ol' digestive track. Then it would become an endless cycle: I would need to be in the bathroom to vomit, but the smell that caused me to vomit would be in the bathroom. Thank god I'm not pregnant/suffering from food poisoning. However, I hope we can make peace with the janitorial staff.

And now gentle reader, you may ask, how is it that I know so intimately the urinal cake? Well, before I worked for the museum I was summer help at my college school of the arts in the facilities office. My duties included things like cutting locks of lockers, delivering the mail, and other assorted gopher work. My favorite activity while on duty was to read a magazine called Bathroom World.

Bathroom World was magical. Not only advertised were many different types of urinal cakes, but the ad wizards at bathroom world had thoughtfully staged a number of tableaux to advertise their products. My favorite one depicted an older wheel chair bound man chatting to a young boy in the comfort of a Bathroom World commercial bathroom. Because men of all ages stop to chat in the bathroom. Right guys?

No matter how many times I had read it, I could pick it up, open it to any page, and it would cause me to giggle. Sadly, the Facilities Manager deemed my love of Bathroom World to be slightly unnatural, and threw it out on my day off.

I was devastated.