Where do TriMet drivers go to the bathroom? —I.P. Freely
I often tell friends who’ve never worked in the service industry that there are two kinds of jobs: the kind where you can pee whenever you want and the kind where you can’t. I do this mostly to seem like a restaurant badass: I don’t quite channel Roy’s “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe” speech from Blade Runner, but there’s definitely an implication that soft-handed office workers could never handle the ’Nam-like intensity of the Friday dinner rush.
But just between you and me, I.P., I’m overselling it. Normie jobs have their own special torments (the biggest hard no of my life came when I found out that some people do two Zoom meetings at the same time), and in any case, having to plan your leaks isn’t as dehumanizing—or as infrequent—as I make it sound. Plenty of perfectly respectable jobs require micturitional foresight, including surgeon, kindergarten teacher and talking-filibuster-era U.S. senator. Bus and MAX operators are in good company…