A Plea Against Back-To-Back Toilet Carrier Mounts

Imagine you miraculously enter an empty bathroom at work. No, not the one closest to your desk. The one on the other side of the building that takes a little extra effort to get to but doesn't get nearly as much foot traffic. So little, in fact, that your entrance actually trips the motion detector, and the lights flick on as if to say, "Relax bud. Nobody's been in here for a while, and there's a good chance you'll get the whole thing to yourself if you're lucky." You sashay toward an open stall door, unencumbered by a potential awkward interaction with a coworker where neither of you are really sure if it's more polite to say hello or just avoid eye contact. (Most likely you would have both settled for a timid nod, halfway between a smile and a grimace.) You click the latch closed as it echoes throughout the vacant tiled room and have yourself a peaceful sit - and then it happens.

At first, you aren't sure if you're imagining it, but the seat sinks down a fraction of an inch. "I must have shifted my weight in a weird way," you think to yourself. Then suddenly, it moves UP a fraction of an inch, nudging you out of your delusion. The wall-mounted toilet creaks against its bolts. A blueprint vision of the office floor plan flashes across your mind, and you conclude there is only one possibility: The interior wall bracket holding all of your weight is acting as a fulcrum for a mirror-image configuration in the adjacent bathroom, and someone on the other side of the wall is coming to the same mortifying realization. Your tranquil retreat becomes a nightmare as the space-saving back-to-back mount has you both perched upon a see-saw of embarrassment. You both freeze, unsure of what to do, and somehow it's worse to know they noticed too. Trying not to think about the fact that there is one degree of plumbing separating your bare butts, you rush cautiously through your business and time your exit strategically as not to run into anyone on the way out.

I don't know the answer to this modern engineering catastrophe, but there just has to be a better way, and if I have to be the one to bring this matter to the forefront of public attention, so be it.