I Was Completely In The Daaaaark.......

(title sung in Bob Mortimer voice a la 'Man With The Stick')

So they installed a smart new 'bathroom' at work. No bath, obviously, just toilets. I used the gents and all seems fine and dandy and rather pristine. As you walk in there is total darkness due to the energy saving automatic light sensors. The fluorescent bulb flickers into life a split second after you enter and one can then empty the bladder illuminated in the bright white glow.

However, I used one of the stalls for the first time today. It soon became apparent that the sensors for the lights

(a) switch the lights off after approximately 3 minutes if no movement is detected; and
(b) they are located near the urinals but there are none with any detection range over the stalls

Trust me - I moved as much as I could in the circumstances. I was flapping my arms and waving a loo roll streamer in the air, all to no avail.

Without wishing to be graphic, I couldn't feasibly emerge from the stall at that point, but couldn't really proceed with the task in hand in pitch darkness either.

Solution: after a little pondering I rolled up a ball of loo roll and tossed it over the door towards the wall.

Fail

I thought maybe it was too small or light so chucked my wallet over instead (pondered chucking my phone as was running out of ideas - wallet seemed less likely to damage on impact).

Success.

Later contacted the contractors who confirmed the sensor cannot be set to cover the stalls, but the timer can be changed to shut off after 3, 5, 7 or 11 minutes. So perhaps need to do a straw poll amongst male colleagues tomorrow. I will suggest 7 mins should be fine.

I mean - who needs any longer than that to have a wank anyway?