Posit an office.

    In this office, you have a multitude of cubicles, a plethora of computer hookups, a sink, a fridge, a microwave, pretty much everything you need. Except, one might point out, a bathroom. So in this imagined office, which for the purposes of this entry we'll hypothetically call "The place Seth works", if you needed to use the bathroom you'd have to walk out of the office into the hall and go to the public bathroom on that floor.

    Of course, in this hypothetical office, there aren't really any public bathrooms on your floor, so you'd need to go upstairs and past the kid space to the men's room there. Unfortunately, the men's room on that floor is a one-seater. And since, as previously mentioned, that one-seater is the public men's toilet for those two floors, it is likely to be occupied. At this point, you look at the door of the one-seater women's room next door. Since it is also a one-seater, and you know that women use the men's room all the time, you consider the merits of using it. After all, if someone accosts you, you have a ready reply.

    "I," you would intone in a deep and serious voice, "am a man of woe."

    However, your chance to use this clever rejoinder won't arise, because for reasons you're bound to have figured out by now, this conceptualized women's room is also occupied. So, down three flights you would trudge, passing your floor again where you began your bladder-driven quest, passing the lobby where people who have landed on Just Visiting are milling about, and finally arriving at the basement public restrooms, restrooms for the plebian masses, who have taken the liberty of urinating on the seat for your convenience. But it least it's still time away from your hypothetical desk.