Logistics: Showering at Work

One of the major concerns for anyone who considers biking or running to work is the sweat factor.  No one wants to roll in to the office looking like a perspiration factory.  Before I started this one-month experiment, I brought in about two weeks worth of dress clothes and hung them in a closet down the hall from my office.  (I'm just about out - so I'll need to do another round someday soon.)  And I sent the following email to the Council's operations manager:

Hi Grace,

I wanted to give you a heads up that starting Monday, I’m going 30 days without my car as an experiment in public transportation.  Since some of these days I’m going to be literally running to work, I’ve hung a few changes of work clothes in the breezeway closet in the back of the sixth floor.  I hope this does not offend anyone.  Thanks.

I thought it best to "cover my ass" with this email, since about a week before, I outed myself as the culprit who left a towel hanging in the bathroom on our floor, following an anonymous complaint to Grace.  I couldn't imagine co-workers being upset with a few shirts and pants hanging in a mostly unused closet, but you never know.  It is important to me to minimize the "footprint" this experiment has on my co-workers - I don't want to disrupt their daily routines if at all possible.

The shower on our floor is nothing glamarous.  It's jammed into the corner of a bathroom that is already pretty tiny.  The Council story goes, that "back in the 70's" (long before I was born and LONG before my time at the Council) there was a huge snowstorm and several Councilmembers got stranded here at the Council Office Building.  After that, they implored the County to install a bathroom with a shower so that they would not be stranded without the appropriate facilities again.  I'm not sure if Councilmembers were actually ever stranded here again in the history of the building since then, but their misfortune is my convenience now.  So after I arrive by foot or bike, I grab my travel size bottles of body wash and shampoo from my office and my work clothes for the day from my closet and try to get in and out as quickly as possible.  (College dorm style.  Flip flops and everything.)  Mostly I don't want to inconvenience co-workers who are trying to rinse out their coffee mugs for their morning cup.

I try to arrive at the office by 8:15 or 8:20, so that I'm out of the bathroom by 8:30 when people start coming in.  All and all, it's not that bad.  There are a few other co-workers of mine that use the shower every once in a while, but I think I'm the only one who uses it so regularly.  Which means the next time an anonymous complaint comes in about a forgotten towel, Grace will know exactly who to come to...