Look chaps. We need to address the elephant in the room. The thing that everyone's too scared to talk about. The thing that even people who are quite happy to talk about their massive green dildo at the dinner table get all awkward and weird about.
Poo.
According to a new survey by Vectair, 56% of us feel 'embarassed or awkward doing a number 2 in a toilet other than their own.' And a whopping 41% of people try not to go at work.
That's a lot of people who are holding their poos in. And holding poos in isn't good for you. It can cause emotional stress, lead to constipation and, in extreme cases, anal fissures (yeah, nice), hemorrhoids and cause serious damage to your internal sphincter.
So. Let's nip this in the bud once and for all. Let's get you doing poos at work. Here's a few healthy, handy and super stealth tips to make your work poos slyer* than a cat burglar's.
*Obviously if you're totally blasé about your poos already, good for you. You are the woman we all aspire to be some day. Until then, we hope these tips help.
Pick your timings wisely
As someone who likes to overthink things and is also possibly too into my own school of social anthropology, I've put years of research into figuring out the exact times the loos are going to be busy. My advice? Avoid from between 10:30-11:30, right after lunch, and around 3PM in the afternoon. Oh, and right before everyone leaves for the day too. Other times present minimal loo traffic, leaving you to drop the kids off at the pool in peace.
Enter casually
We've got unisex loos at our work just like Ally McBeal (but without the unhinged colleagues) and there's guys in our office who take papers, magazines and even their iPads into the loos as reading materials to pass the time. In fact, one time a colleague found an issue of FHM left next to the toilet. That was a sorry day. Basically, if you're shy about pooing, avoid taking any visible reading material in with you. Obvs if your phone is in your pocket with the Debrief pre-loaded on it to read, that's fine.
Once in the bathroom, avoid the 'poo loo'. You know the one. It's the disabled one. Or the one that's furthest away from all the others. It's the one that everyone uses to do their business. Stick to the wee loos just to throw everyone off the scent. You sly trickster you.
Mask the noise
There's a few options to help you out here. Firstly, you could flush the loo while you go but with this, you run the risk of not being able to flush the loo a second time at the end of your session. Whatever, you know your work loos better than me. If you think they're together enough to handle two flushes in short succession, take this option.
If not, resort to dropping a few artfully balled up pieces of toilet tissue into the water first to give your poo a nice pillowy landing. If you've got hand dryers within reach (in our loos they're in the cubicle), fashion yourself a long reaching instrument like the giant poking device the Friends cast use to poke Ugly Naked Guy and set the handdryer off just before you go.
In desperate situations, a coughing fit will go some way to help. Not much though.
Hide the smell
If your facilities staff were nice enough to splash out on air freshener for you guys then god bless them. Problem solved. Just make sure you spray the air freshener whilst the hand dryer or flush is making noise. If not, invest in one of those tester perfume things and bring it along in your bra as back up. In fact, here's how to make your own DIY poo spray. If none of these options are available, I have one friend who swears by squirting soap into the loo before you flush it. I've never tried this so I can't vouch for it's effectiveness but I think it's worth a shot.
Own your poo
Now, walk out of that bathroom with your head held high, flashing a grin at Steve from accounting, shooting Sharon from HR a little wink and walk back to your desk as the office around you slowly rises to their feet, clapping you home, marvelling at your ability to do the world's stealthiest poo.
Like this? Then you might also be interested in:
Follow Jess on Twitter @Jess_Commons
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.