and what are you going to do with that when you get it home?

in a society where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is ever widening, and your worth is measured by the things you own, the car you drive and the jewelry you wear, theft will always be a problem. which is why security screws on bathroom stalls make perfect sense. because you know, everyone is always trying to steal bathroom doors, and no one likes to take a dump with no door. it's totally undignified.


now i could understand, that yeah, maybe some high school kids decided it would be a funny prank to dismantle some bathroom stalls. maybe it even happened more than once, and to prevent it from happening again the school installed security screws. that might explain why ONE bathroom somewhere in the midwest might have security screws installed, but certainly not the fact that the vast majority of public restrooms use them.

i've been thinking about this off and on for quite a while, mostly whilst crapping in a public restroom. i have two theories, neither of which seem very reasonable:

1) bathroom stall theft is a widespread problem

2) all bathroom stalls are manufactured by a single company, which also happens to manufacture security screws

but wait, there's more! recently, i was in a bathroom that used TWO DIFFERENT KINDS of security screws. basically, each bracket or hinge had four screws on each side, two of one type and two of another type, meaning you would need to have two security screw bits in order to steal the stall. again, i can come up with only two explanations, and again, neither of them seem very reasonable:

1) it is a marketing ploy by bathroom stall manufacturers, in order to be able to make the claim that their stalls are more secure than their competitors.

2) bathroom stall thieves have wised up and starting carrying the more common type of security screw bits around with them, forcing bathroom stall makers to take more drastic measures in order to protect their "customers".

brb, potty.