American Fez

Royal Flush

During recent, very minor renovations, one of our office bathrooms was not only equipped with a selection of fragrant hand soaps and an inexhaustible supply of extra-strength air fresheners but was also renamed Executive Washroom. A prominent sign bearing this new hierarchical designation was even been screwed into the door, which is now permanently locked and the location of its concealed key only vouchsafed to so-called executives via an email subsequently forwarded to all other employees.

So the only reason for upgrading this particular bathroom, situated near the elevator, appears to be to discourage couriers and delivery men from taking advantage of our facilities. Such intruders are often accused of blocking the toilet and using too many paper towels which they leave scattered all over the floor instead of depositing in the receptacle provided. Although I sympathize with the people who consequently have to clean up the mess, I do believe prohibiting universal access to a means of bowel and bladder relief is callous and cruel; not a million miles away, in fact, from the work of demons, trolls and dungeon-masters. After all, when you have to go you have to go and not being able to go is an exquisitely agonizing torture we have all experienced.

Alas, my protests on behalf the mailman with interstitial cystitis, the UPS guy taking a diuretic, and the IBS impacted bike messenger were noted but ignored by what I currently refer to as the Water Closet Comintern. Rendered thus powerless, my only recourse was to post my own makeshift, satirical sign above the toilet roll holder: Executive Wiping Station. It's still in place three weeks later so I'm thinking of planting another. Something along the lines of Apply To Chief Executive Officer In Person For Permission To Use Plunger.

Box Fresh

Surveying a cardboard Stonehenge of weekly meal kits and farm-to-table subscription boxes delivered to my neighbor's porch, I wondered whether mail-order food supplies were symptoms of a neurotic need to avoid supermarkets brought on by still virulent acute Covid anxiety, or simply a convenient way of stocking the pantry for someone who "doesn't have time to shop." However, as I've never actually met and never even see my neighbor I was unable to come to any conclusion. 

Later, rummaging through my refrigerator in search of random vegetables to roast on a pan with the remains of a rotisserie chicken, I decided that my neighbor's mail-order food delivery lifestyle, this plug-and-play cuisine of his, was some new-fangled form of conspicuous consumption that, rather than exhibiting the fruits of his personal wealth, demonstrated his successful navigation of and complete immersion in the high-speed world of modern interconnectivity. It's as if he was hanging a flag from his porch that displayed a QR Code instead of Old Glory; or planting a flower bed in his front yard that resembles the face of Elon Musk when in full bloom.

What next? Will he put his home on the market with a price listed in cryptocurrency? Perhaps he will the demolish the house altogether and rebuild with an architectural design more redolent of Silicon Valley. I'm pretty sure he's already installing a charging station for an electric car in his driveway. No doubt he will soon cancel all those mail order food delivery subscriptions, subsisting entirely on full-flavor nutrition pills and protein capsules instead, dining in a Virtual Reality Michelin-starred restaurant generated from the comfort of his own bedroom.

Thus will my neighbor be self-condemned to the pre-planned solitary confinement of technological dependence, never to know the joy of dragging six bags of heavy groceries back from the market and only then realizing he forgot the shallots his wife told him she needed for a recipe. But who knows? Perhaps one day he will emerge from his Internet dungeon and, not unlike the proverbial neighbor of yore who asks to borrow a cup of sugar, will ask to borrow a portion of my WiFi bandwidth because his WiFi is down which means he can't tell the oven to turn itself on.