We've all heard the refrain, "It's a shit job, but someone's gotta do it."
Any number of occupations fit the bill: Garbage collector. Asbestos remover. Devil Rays manager.
But there's another category.
To rephrase: "It's a shit job, and no one's gotta do it."
Here at the Planet, we decided it was time for a team-report special investigation into the whys and wherefores of jobs that are, for all intents and purposes, totally unnecessary.
We made a list, which you can find elsewhere in this story.
But among all of these useless pursuits, one stood out. Only one kept rising to the top of the heap, only one remained, inarguably, even annoyingly, uncalled-for.
Only one could be named The Most Useless Job in the World.
And that job is restroom attendant.
Consider for a moment a world without restroom attendants. Would any of us feel deprived without the opportunity to have a total stranger reach over and squirt soap in our hands, hand us a paper towel or give us a mint? Does anyone really need that fresh spritz of cologne or perfume? Would any of us miss putting the dollar in the tip jar, or that nagging sense of obligation to do so?
(I, for one, have freed myself of men's room tipping guilt; I simply refuse to ever, ever drop so much as a dime in the basket. I meet the attendant's baleful look with a defiant grin. Try it — it's liberating.)
So, how does an attendant-free restroom world look? Wonderful.
It's hard to find people who disagree. "I want to dry my own hands, unzip my own fly, hold my own dick," cracked Craig Parker while sitting on the outside patio of the Green Iguana in St. Petersburg. Roger Peterson, strolling toward the men's room at Martini Lounge in Baywalk, had this to say about his impending encounter with the valet: "Hate 'em. I paid $9 for a drink in here. Damn if I want to pay another dollar to get rid of it."
Heather Bresbris, sitting at a table at Limey's Pub in St. Pete, summed it up thus: "I'm relieving myself. I don't need any help."
Just the concept of the restroom attendant is an affront to the American spirit. Although most of these folks are independent contractors, they are not engaged in true entrepreneurship. Their work is not based on supply and demand, because there is no demand. Not customer demand, at least. Clubs like to have attendants because they get someone to keep their restrooms clean and tidy, and they get it for free.
Restroom valets plumb the economics of guilt — just like the doorman in New York who hails you a cab and then puts out his hand, just like the hotel porter who carries your bags into the room and then lingers until you grease him. But at least the latter two are providing a service that is, if not exactly necessary, at least helpful. Squirting soap in my hands is not helpful; it's annoying. And to pay for it…?
And what of the psychological toll? As children, we see the bathroom as a place of privacy. Then we go to school and there are other kids doing their business in the same space, which has got to be a bit traumatic in some Freudian sense. Then we graduate to nightclubs and there's a stranger in the bathroom who's helping, and supervising, us. It's like potty training for adults.
OK, maybe I'm getting a little unhinged now, but do you feel my passion, my pain?
The restroom attendant has a small but unique place in popular culture. It's the subject of at least one classic film, Der Letzte Mann (The Last Laugh), a 1924 silent movie by German director F.W. Murnau that tells the story of a proud doorman at a posh hotel who gets demoted to washroom attendant.
Other efforts have been less celebrated. The 1978 sitcom Cindy was a version of the Cinderella tale with an all-black cast. The title character thinks her father has an important job at a big hotel but finds out he's actually the men's room attendant. When her wicked stepmother finds out, the shit really flies.
But here's the topper. According to Hollywood.com, there's a film in development called Men's Room Attendant, who "must become a hero when he learns that the woman he fell in love with is targeted by a hitman." It's the first recorded instance of the bathroom-attendant-as-savior motif.
Remember The Talented Mr. Ripley? Matt Damon's character started out as a men's room valet. The famous radio personality Roscoe Mercer, the first black news announcer on WINS in New York and the first black DJ on KBLA in Los Angeles, was first a men's room attendant at the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, N.J.
David Letterman once offered up the Top Ten Most Embarrassing Jobs. No.6: George Michael's men's room attendant.
And there are endless tales of restroom attendant bad behavior. Just one example: A New York Metro column reported in 2000 that a men's room valet at the trendy Limelight club attempted to charge patrons who filled up empty drink cups with water from the tap. "Water is $2!" he barked.
In Tampa Bay, restroom attendants are mostly a nightclub phenomenon. A quick survey of the area's finer restaurants revealed few who staff their restrooms. But along Seventh Avenue in Ybor City and other party corridors, the soap-squirter brigade is in full force.
Their styles and temperaments vary wildly. The first-floor men's room at Amphitheater is tended by Luis Angel, a true credit to his profession (see sidebar).
On a recent Saturday night, the Planet investigative team wended its way down Seventh, popping quickly into clubs to check out their bathroom attendants. (Kudos to the handful that didn't have them.)
Our last stop was at the hip-hop haven Empire. The men's room valet stood with his arms crossed, his head tilted to the side, a look of hatred etched on his face. He answered our handful of questions (e.g. "They tip pretty good in here?") with slow, disgusted nods. He looked every bit the nasty dude. I might think twice before not tipping this guy.
It's hard to get a bead on the local bathroom-attendant business model, a largely unorganized conglomeration of individual contractors and a few small agencies that place attendants in clubs. One such company is American Bathroom Valets (ABV), founded by Patrick Fernandez of Tampa. It's a tough biz, he says, so tough that he's handing ABV over to Luis Angel, his ace attendant.
At the moment, the firm has only 10 valets. The men pony up $30 a night to ABV, women pay nothing. ("Women are hard to find," Fernandez says.) They stop by the Florida Avenue office and pick up a suitcase filled with supplies: colognes, perfumes, candies, mouthwash, cigars, condoms, feminine hygiene products.
They're on the job by 9:30 or 10 p.m. and work until just before closing. On a good Saturday night, the attendants expect to edge past a hundred bucks in tips. On a slow Friday, they might pull in less than 30. Fernandez says that "every fifth or sixth person is gonna tip you."
When he started ABV a few years ago, Fernandez recruited attendants from homeless shelters — overflowing with altruism, he figured it would be a way to help out down-and-outers. The company quickly became an unsupervised band of rogue operatives pressuring folks for tips. Some of them sold mini-bottles of booze to patrons and engaged in other nefarious activities.
Fernandez says he put considerable effort into remaking his company culture. Now, the ABV way dictates: Keep a friendly, positive demeanor; don't press clubgoers for tips and don't post signs saying that you work for gratuities; alert security about vandalism and brewing fights; keep the bathroom clean and tidy, and mop up vomit if needed (but don't clean when no one's in the restroom; ABV wants customers to see their attendants going the extra mile).
This last directive might be the only viable case for placing a valet in a restroom. Attendants say that without them the bathrooms would turn into broken-down, cluttered, puke-encrusted shitholes. Fair enough, but the way I see it, if a nightspot is so populated with heathens that the men's room becomes a sty, well I, for one, don't want to hang out there.
Although we of the Planet editorial staff think the job of bathroom attendant — the Most Useless Job in the World — should be eradicated by some executive decree, it appears as if the paper-towel slingers are going to be around for a while. Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that the job, which had "seemed to be going the way of the chimney sweep," was experiencing a major upsurge. "Bathroom attendants are showing up all over," the story said.
Oh my God, it's spreading.
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This article appears in Nov 9-15, 2005.