You’ve gotta be aggressive with the soap. The second the guy’s fingers hit the water you sidle right up to him — liquid soap bottle in one hand, paper towel in the other. “A little Antibacterial Aloe Vera to freshen your evening, sir?” Never mind the dispenser mounted on the wall — that dispenser is your enemy. You have to be the only option for cleanliness, the gatekeeper to a more sanitary world.
You have to make the guy feel like it’s only right that he pay you to wash his own hands.
There’s no degree needed to bathroom-attend. It’s an instinct game — either you have it or you don’t. And just minutes into the first (and hopefully last) night of my bathroom valet career, I already knew the score. I’m not a boastful guy — I can’t cook and I’m a nightmare on the dance floor. But mark my words: I can attend the hell out of a bathroom.
My first de facto office was the men’s room at Mise en Place, a high-end restaurant near downtown Tampa. I had come prepared — if I was going to do this, I was going to do it right. I had on a freshly pressed Kenneth Cole tux (borrowed from a pal) with a skinny black tie (borrowed from another). Under my arm was a tray table, and in a blue knapsack, I carried my war chest:
Q-Tips. Two bottles of fancy cologne. Mints, gum, Kleenex, cigarettes, mouthwash. And a little wicker basket — my tip jar.
Mise en Place’s facilities are spacious; four sinks in one section, four urinals and three stalls in another. I set up my table near the sinks, threw two crisp dollar bills in the tip basket, unbuttoned my jacket and awaited my first guest.
I had called ahead and gotten permission from the management, so there was no fear of being thrown out. Still, I was nervous as I waited for the door to swing open. Would they know I was a fraud? Would I accidentally squirt soap on their suits? What would I say?
Then the handle turned.
“Hello, sir! Welcome to the bathroom!”
He was an older guy in a gray suit and a flashy tie. He didn’t seem surprised to see me — this was a man who’d been attended to before.
As he worked things out at the urinal, I hovered by the sink, wondering if I should be making idle chitchat. But he stayed quiet, so I did too. Throughout the course of the night, I learned that if a guy wants to talk while he’s taking a piss, he’ll begin the conversation himself.
The old guy zipped up and walked to the sink, turned on the faucet. I was there in a heartbeat. “Great tie,” I said as I plopped a soapy dollop on his hand. He washed again, then dried off with the towel I’d handed him.
“Why thank you,” he said, stopping for a second to fumble with his back pocket. And then out it came. A wallet. He pulled out a single and dropped it in the basket.
I was officially a working bathroom attendant.
There was a party of stockbrokers in Mise en Place that night, and next up was a string of characters straight out of Boiler Room. Remember what I said about guys wanting to talk at the urinals? In the span of eight minutes — and I promise I’m not exaggerating — I heard the same I-have-a-giant-penis joke three times. I won’t bore you with the details (it has to do with the urinal water being cold), but I knew my role. I was here to attend to these guys, whether that meant a piece of gum or an ego boost.
“Good one, man,” I’d say from the sink, careful not to make eye contact in the mirror. Each guy dropped a buck in the basket before he left. And one, who was washing his hands when a few of his friends walked in, tossed me a five.
Hey, big spender.
Business was good during my hour at Mise en Place — I made $30 all told — but there were a few stretches when the room was empty. And trust me, you start feeling pretty weird pretty quick hanging out by yourself in a bathroom you don’t plan on using. What do you do? Hang out in the stalls? Pop a zit or two?
After a sweet three-dollar tip from a guy who appreciated my compliment on his hand-wringing skills — “You’re one of the top four hand-wringers of all time,” I told him — I was ready to go. I’d gotten my feet wet, but greater challenges sat on the horizon. It was time to push myself.
It was time to go where no bathroom attendant had ever gone before.
There are a lot of good things to say about Mastry’s, the legendary St. Pete dive bar where I headed next. They’ve got cheap beer, a solid mix of working-class folks and hipsters, and a dangerously addictive fishing arcade game. But the bathroom? The bathroom looks like something you’d find in a Turkish prison. The size of a shoebox, the thing has two full-length urinals that run from your chest to the floor and one stall with a lock that only barely holds the door in place. It’s not the ideal set-up for attending. And to add to the challenge, Mastry’s owners had no idea what I was about to do.
There was no room for my tray table, so I improvised. The mints teetered on the towel dispenser, the mouthwash on the edge of the sink. And I put the tip jar somewhere everyone would see it — right on top of the closest urinal.
The first guy who walked in had long blond hair and was wearing a pink button-down. He looked surprised to see me, but didn’t balk when I came at him with the soap, and he happily dropped two bucks into the basket before he left.
It would be half of what I made the rest of the night.
As nonchalant as the gentlemen at Mise en Place had been, the guys at Mastry’s were upfront. “What the fuck are you doing?” one asked me as I moved out of his way. “Don’t you know where you are? This is Mastry’s.”
“I’m just trying to spruce the place up,” I told him. “This is like the minors, you know? I’m gonna hone my game down here and hopefully move up to the big leagues.”
I won’t say the guy looked at me cross-eyed, but it was close. He didn’t want soap, didn’t want a paper towel. In and out.
Soon guys were coming back just to gawk at me. “Holy shit!” one said when he saw me leaning up against the towel dispenser in my tux. “It’s true! There really is a dude back here.”
I was starting to get nervous — no doubt the owners were going to be a little unhappy with me.
As I waited for a bartender to get wind of my presence, I finally faced the bathroom attendant’s ultimate nightmare. The guy didn’t even notice me as he rushed into the stall — our boy was battling the runs, and I was standing two feet away. What do you do? Pretend it’s not happening? Suggest he lay off the chili? I chose the former, but the guy must have been unhappy with my performance. He walked straight past me — and the sink — back into the bar.
Finally, a bartender came around the corner. He was a big guy, the kind of guy you don’t want to piss off. “What are you doing?” he asked me, eyebrows furrowed.
“Uh, nothing.” I said, backing away. “I just help people out with the soap, you know, hand ’em a paper towel or two.”
He stood for a second. Then smiled.
“Well, you must be one dumb dude — you’re not gonna make a cent,” he laughed. “But if you want to do it, go ahead.”
I stuck around for a few more minutes, but with the possibility of a confrontation gone, my career as a bathroom attendant seemed far less exciting. I was packing up my stuff when a guy with a ponytail walked in.
“Oh my god,” he said. “Are you for real?”
I gave him my “I’m a rookie” shtick and waited for him to go to the sink. He did, and I gave him one of the best soap squirts in the history of soap squirts. I was right there with the towel — bathroom-attending was like second nature already.
The guy threw the paper in the trash, then put his arm on my shoulder. “If the stench ever gets too rough, you can always leave,” he said. “There’s a whole world outside this bathroom.”
And then he walked through the door. Without leaving a tip.
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This article appears in Nov 9-15, 2005.
