辦公室?guī)信珠_的理由

Peeing at work has traditionally been a segregated business. In the old days, directors relieved themselves in different, swishier places from the rank and file.

傳統(tǒng)上，在工作場所如廁存在著一種隔離。過去，董事們有自己單獨的、更豪華的洗手間，不與普通員工一起如廁。

Later, when hierarchies went out of fashion, the executive washroom was abolished in the name of equality and chief executives peed shoulder to shoulder with office juniors.

后來，隨著等級制度不再流行，高管專用洗手間以促進平等為由被廢除，首席執(zhí)行官們開始與初級員工一同小解。

However, the lavatorial segregation of men and women at work has endured. In private houses, on planes and on trains the sexes happily use the same toilets but at work they still do not.

然而，工作場所廁所的男女隔離保留了下來。在私人住所、飛機和火車上，男性和女性已經習慣于使用相同的廁所，但在工作場所，男廁與女廁依然是分開的。

This segregation is threatened by the rise of the gender-neutral toilet. This time it has nothing to do with equality of men and women. It is because if you are transgender, it is not clear which loo you should go for.

然而，中性廁所的興起正在威脅著這種隔離。這一次與男女平等無關。原因是，如果你是跨性別者，你會不知道自己該去哪個廁所。

In California a law was passed this month insisting that any single-stall toilet must be gender neutral. Starbucks is busily introducing them, while the Barnes & Noble bookstore is encouraging people to use whichever loo they prefer. Last week at Salesforce’s annual festival of self-congratulation in San Francisco, there were gender-neutral loos. More than that, each of the 150,000 participants was given a cute badge on which to put a sticker with their preferred pronoun: he/him, she/her, they/them or ask me.

近期加利福尼亞州通過的一項法律要求，所有單隔間廁所都必須是不分性別的。星巴克(Starbucks)正在積極引入這種廁所，而Barnes & Noble書店正在鼓勵人們按照自身意愿選擇上男廁或者女廁。不久前，Salesforce在舊金山舉行的年度慶?；顒优鋫涞囊彩侵行詭?。不僅如此，15萬名參與者都得到了一個可愛的徽章，可以把顯示他們希望聽到的稱呼的貼紙貼上去：“他”、“她”、“他們”，或者“問我”。

This, I suspect, is big news. Where Salesforce leads, the rest will follow.

我懷疑，這會是條大新聞。任何事情只要Salesforce起了頭，其他人就會跟上。

But are unisex loos a good idea at work? Making everyone pee in the same place surely makes sense. On average we get out of our seats and go to the toilet three or four times a day, but instead of this being an opportunity for the broadest and most serendipitous sort of networking, we arbitrarily limit ourselves to only one slice of the workforce.

但在工作場所中，中性廁所真的是個好主意嗎?讓每個人都在同樣的地方如廁當然有道理。我們平均一天離開座位上廁所3到4次，但上廁所并沒有變成我們進行最廣泛和最隨機的人脈拓展的機會，我們無理由地把可能與自己一同如廁的人限制為同性。

I have just canvassed views around my office and found the big divide is less by gender than by age. All the millennials shrugged and said making office loos gender-neutral was fine. They looked so unconcerned that I found myself feeling sheepish for having asked the question at all.

我征求了一下我辦公室里同事們的意見，發(fā)現與其說男女意見分歧大，不如說不同年齡層的意見分歧大。所有的千禧一代都聳聳肩，表示把辦公場所的廁所變成中性廁所沒問題。他們看起來渾不在意，以至于我為自己問了這個問題感到不好意思。

Yet older workers were less keen. The men mostly said they did not like the idea but could not say why. The women were more forthcoming. Variously they said the men’s loos smelt. They did not want to put on make-up in front of male colleagues. The ladies loo was the perfect place to cry. Or to gossip. Or was a much needed refuge.

然而，較為年長的員工就不那么贊同了。大部分男性表示他們不喜歡這個想法，但又說不出為什么。女性則更加直言不諱。她們的說法各式各樣，有的說男廁的味道難聞。有的說她們不想在男同事面前化妝。女廁是哭泣或八卦的絕佳之所?；蛘咭彩欠浅１匾谋茈y所。

Yet none of these five reasons is conclusive. All loos stink if they are not cleaned often enough, so the answer is more frequent dousing with Harpic. As for make-up, I put mine on so amateurishly that I dislike being observed by anyone. Given the choice, I would rather battle with cloggy mascara in front of an oblivious man than in front of a woman who could see what a hash I was making of it.

然而，以上的這5個理由都不是很有說服力。如果清潔得不夠勤，所有的廁所都很難聞，因此答案是勤用潔廁劑清潔。至于化妝，我化妝的技術非常外行，因此被任何人看到我都不情愿。如果真要選，我寧可在一名粗枝大葉的男性面前與粘稠的睫毛膏作斗爭，也不想在一個能看出我刷得一團糟的女性面前做這件事。

A similar argument applies to crying. It is true that women cry more than men, and as blubbing at one’s desk is not acceptable, we tend to do it in the loo. Yet the few times I have wept at work, my main aim was not to be observed. Men are possibly less likely to notice and to comment, and so having them washing their hands next to you as you dab your red eyes might not be too bad.

哭泣也是同理。的確，女性哭泣得比男性多，因為在辦公桌旁哭泣不被接受，我們往往會在廁所里哭泣。然而，我為數不多的幾次在辦公室哭泣時，我最在意的都是別有人說什么。男性注意到你哭了并加以評論的可能性較低，因此在你擦拭著紅腫的眼睛的同時，有男性在你旁邊洗手，或許也不是太壞。

It is also true that more gossiping goes on in the women’s loos than in the men’s — where I gather silence usually prevails. Yet for either sex the loo is a dangerous place for chatting as you never know who is in the stalls. As a refuge, the office toilet is much better — there are times when the privacy afforded by a locked cubicle door is just what one needs. But in those instances, I cannot see it matters much whether the invisible people in neighbouring stalls are men or women.

女廁里的八卦的確也比男廁里更多——我猜男廁里通常是靜默無聲的。然而無論是對女性還是男性，在廁所閑聊都是一件危險的事情，因為你永遠不知道其他隔間里有誰。而作為避難所，辦公室?guī)拇_非常棒——有時鎖上的隔間門提供的私密性正是人們需要的。但在那種情況下，我看不出隔壁隔間里看不見的人是男是女有多大關系。

Yet there is another, better reason for segregated loos. While half the tech world was gathered in San Francisco, I was at a rival tech conference in Europe. As almost everyone in that industry appears to be a man, at coffee time I had a weird experience. There was a long queue for the men’s loo — and none for the women’s. As I dried my hands I started up an interesting conversation with the three others in there about why there are so few of them in tech, and a thought occurred to me: when women are in such a minority, a loo of their own is a perk worth keeping.

然而，男女廁所分開還有一個更好的理由。在科技界近一半的人聚集在舊金山時，我正在歐洲參加一個類似的科技大會。因為似乎科技業(yè)里幾乎所有人都是男性，茶歇時，我經歷了古怪的事情。男廁前排起長龍，而女廁這邊沒人排隊。在烘干手的時候，我與女廁所的另外3人就為何科技業(yè)的女性如此之少進行了有趣的談話，我突然萌生了一個想法：在女性占如此少數的時候，女性專屬廁所是一項值得保留的福利。