Ross: Advanced civilizations are in deep bladder denial
Apr 5, 2021, 6:03 AM | Updated: 9:14 am
About two weeks ago, Rep. Marc Pocan of Wisconsin fired off a tweet at Amazon criticizing the company for portraying itself as a model workplace, when at the same time – quoting Rep. Pocan’s tweet – “you union-bust and make workers urinate in water bottles.”
That drew a response from an official Amazon account which said: “You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us…”
But the Amazon response was quickly ambushed by posts not just from Amazon drivers, but truckers and transit drivers who all had plenty of gotta-go horror stories.
It got bad enough that Amazon officially apologized – saying, “the tweet was incorrect. It did not contemplate our large driver population and instead wrongly focused only on our fulfillment centers.”
In other words, whoever wrote the tweet thought the issue was about the warehouses, where the company says there are plenty of private places to pee. Although I’ve read complaints from those workers as well.
But this is yet another reminder that advanced civilizations still refuse to acknowledge the human bladder. We are in deep bladder denial.
I remember as a kid walking along our road, which was a shortcut for trucks, wondering who was throwing away unopened bottles of ginger ale …
But it’s not just delivery drivers. Pre-pandemic, navigating the city, shopping, and walking, and biking – you had to be a detective to find a decent public place to pee. And park bathrooms? If you want to discourage immigration, just post some candid pictures of THOSE at the border.
Urban planners have completely failed to meet the bladder challenge. So I think it’s time to turn the job over to the one federal agency that has: As part of the infrastructure package, Biden should direct NASA to design special unisex urban “restroom pants,” so whether you’re a tourist or a trucker, your emergency bottle is built-in.
You can just drop it in front of my childhood home. I don’t live there anymore.
Listen to Seattle’s Morning News weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.