1
I should explain that I was working at the time for a large American investment firm in London. It was quite an exciting place to be: lots of hustle and bustle, with many things to do. The pay was good, and I worked in a well-respected team. I stayed in a hotel for the four days I was there, and, though it was more expensive, I was a few minutes from work in the centre of London. The only downside was that I had to be away from my family, but I mitigated this by working longer hours for four days and leaving each Thursday for an extended weekend. This arrangement worked really well. I found that the normally hideous traffic was better on a Thursday night, especially by the time I left, and getting home again (about 100 miles away) was a doddle. The extra hours I worked each day between 5.30 and 8pm were more productive, once most people had gone and the phone had stopped ringing, and they were also hours during which I could speak to my New York colleagues. Quite often there would be just me, or a couple of colleagues, head-down, working on projects. As I say, productive times.
My employer at the time had a lot of money. The building in which we worked, although not the main London office, was very well appointed, if a little "80s". There was marble and walnut veneer everywhere, but rather too much chrome for my liking! Despite their fondness for chrome, they certainly knew how to make life easy for their staff. For example, there were wonderful canteens, coffee shops dotted around the building, a little gift shop, and air conditioning everywhere. There was even a laundry service in-house; my discarded shirts were dropped off there, and were washed, pressed and ready to pick up when I got back from the weekend. However, the building's best feature was that each toilet in the building (on every floor) had a small adjoining shower / locker room. Very useful for those who cycled into work, for those who wished, as I did, to arrive in civvies and change into formal wear, or for those who were late for work!
After a while, I got into the habit of leaving my suits and shirts at work, and having them laundered there, just taking a small bag back and forth to my home at the weekends. A quick change in the morning when I got to the office, and there I was, ready for work! All in all, life was pretty comfortable.
2
The floor on which I worked was rather full of men, and the men's toilets were frequently engaged; one would often have to wait or go to a different floor to use them. Similarly, the small adjoining shower room was always busy, always full of old towels and discarded underwear, and all-in-all not that pleasant - one of the perils of working in IT is that there are way too many men and not nearly enough girls! That certainly wasn't the case on the top floor of our building. It was populated entirely by women, and, as I discovered, the consequence was that their men's toilet was always empty.
When I first chanced upon it, having gone up a couple of floors one day to find a free one, I was staggered. It was spotlessly clean, completely empty and looked as though it had
never