When i took my first factory job, putting together railcars for Pullman Standard (we were making Amtrak Superliners at the time) I noticed there were a large faction of morning crappers.

These guys would wait till they got to work, and have their first coffee around eight thirty, which usually brought on the morning crap around nine (breaktime) Whistle blew, and something like a hundred guys backed into stalls with the racing form or the Sun Times crossword. Whistle bows again, and as if on cue, the boys would all flush and exit their stalls, come back to work. One of my coworkers and I would always do our best Phil Georgeff imitation as all the stall doors opened at once “Here they come spinning out of the turn!!”.

Now, by way of explanation, these men, to a man, were in their fifties. THey ALL lived in what was Old Pullman or in Bridgeport. I visited several of them, and they lived in almost identical homes- one up, one down brownstones, built before public septic systems, built in the days of outhouses. My own home, though not a brownstone, is of the same vintage.

Anyway, I now understand why those men always chose to do their business at work.

It was the only place they could achieve 15 minutes of quiet.

Those old brownstones were built in a day when a bathroom consisted of a bathtub, a toilet, and a sink. If they were really fancy, they had robin’s egg blue or pepto-bismol pink accents. But one per home was enough.

Maybe back then.

I live in a house where the humans are women two to one. So I feel a kinship with those guys, as I grab my palm pilot and head for the can. Fifteen minutes of unadulterated freedom from interruption? It’s what I live for.