Throne Containment

View From the Throne

I often go to eat lunch in the third-floor staff room at my workplace. There are men’s and women’s washrooms just off the room, and the men’s washroom shares a wall with the tables where people sit and eat.

This shared wall is why I’m writing this article. Occasionally, I am on the wrong side of it.

There is a toilet in that washroom that likes to flush. Not occasionally. Not politely. Persistently.

You enter the stall. It flushes.

You sit. It flushes.

You lean forward slightly. It flushes.

You reach for toilet paper. It flushes.

By the time you are finished, you have participated in a hydraulic sequence of at least three, and often five or six, full-power flushes. The people in the staff room can tell. There is a rhythm to it. A pattern. A kind of unwilling Morse code that signals: someone is caught in the loop.

And it is not a subtle system. This is not a modern, restrained, water-saving device. This is a third-floor installation with pressure, volume, and intent. Each flush announces itself with the confidence of industrial plumbing. Air is pulled downward with enough force that, if you happen to be seated, you become part of the airflow model.

It is not the gentle, engineered experience of a Japanese washlet. There is no warming, no calibration, no negotiation.

Over time, many staff submitted facilities reports requesting that the sensor be adjusted. The repair cycle became predictable. The sensor would be tuned down. The toilet would stop flushing. A work order would follow. The sensor would be restored. The problem would return.

This went on for two years.

Then a new employee solved it.

They placed a small piece of clear tape over the sensor.

After two years, the system was recalibrated. Correctly.

Now the toilet flushes exactly once, when intended.

The tape remains.

No committee approved it. No report documented it. No initiative was announced. No best practice was circulated.

But the system works.

This is how institutions learn: officially, slowly — and then suddenly, through tape.

In some systems, that counts as a breakthrough.