The Dilemma Of The Singapore Squatter

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared as a comment on an article about the sacred moment of the office poop [1]. I found it very enlightening, and decided to give it some prominence. It's always good to learn about other cultures.

I used to have it good. My old company was a large manufacturing concern and had a few well maintained toilets that were very rarely used and allowed you to escape back to your desk from a path that made it look like you were coming back from the factory floor, or the lab or engineering. Pure heaven.

A Singapore squatting-style toilet, accoroding to the Internet, from which this picture was ripped off.

I also used to use these breaks for a half hour of reading my technical journals mostly, and a bit of thinking. My justification was the same as Joe's [2]: if other people take 4 or 5 10-minute smoke breaks (plus they shit too), then my extra time was certainly OK, especially if I am using it to do work...

The situation has changed. I now work in Singapore in a company of 600 people. How many proper shitters do we have, you might ask? ONE. Then we also have a squatter stall next to the 3 person open urinal.

Don't know how many of you have used squatters (imagine your regular crapper has been lowered into the floor, with the rim even with the floor) but it isn't very comfortable to squat for very long. Especially as this one has no aircon and Singapore is on the equator.

The problem is that in order to use the good one you have to walk past our IT department (4 people) in a little hallway and it is near the conference room so whenever customers or corporate people are here they also need to use this crapper. And there is constant competition with my boss, as he is the only other Caucasian at the factory and also likes to have a modest 10 minute constitution (that's what the english call it) -- but on an unpredictable basis.

So I have a constant dilemma: use the good crapper and get "caught" spending 20 minutes on the toilet... OR use the squatter and experience discomfort.

Lately I have tried going to the good crapper just before the end of lunch hour while the IT staff are away from their desk and then escaping out a back exit...
-- Troy