I'm uncertain where to post this, as it is good news for us all. If another place is better, please move it!
This happened yesterday, but I didn't discover the reason until today. I am GOBSMACKED.
So, in the state of Washington the law reads that a person identifying as a gender may use the restroom according to that gender, and any person who has a problem with that is welcome to use a different restroom as they see fit. Literally, that's the law here. See:
https://app.leg.wa.gov/wac/default.aspx?cite=162-32-060When I came out at work I had a fairly thorough conversation with my boss, and we went over the basics of the law and how it applied to us. Luckily we have three rooms, a Ladies, a Men's, and one in the Shop. The Shop and Men's each have a seat and a urinal, and the Ladies has two seats.
The solution my boss arrived at without comment was to install a proper lock on the Shop and the Men's for increased privacy in case the other was in use, and to label the Shop as gender neutral. Okay, I could deal with that, letter of the law and all.
Until yesterday. I went out for an appointment, and came back to find one seat had been removed from the Ladies, and its privacy wall as well. It was as if nothing was there at all, except the evidence of a plug where the porcelain had been. Okay, I thought, that's odd. I didn't get a chance to ask about it until today.
Turns out my boss had spoken to HR regarding the situation, and they decided gender neutral was the buzzword du jour. A urinal will replace the missing seat in the ex-Ladies, and all labels will shift to gender neutral. The organization is shifting its policy to allow anyone to use anything and have a lock on all doors. The fact I'm trans has already ruffled a few feathers, and the pushback of having to follow the law, especially for a bunch of law-abiding small-L libertarians, would cause some bridges to blow up.
I remain gobsmacked. I have in the past taken advantage of the rules as they were written, legitimately, and then the rules were rewritten to avoid the consternation I caused. No one was harmed, except for their sense of humor, and actually the rules were better defined once I was done with them. Now, the superlative is making the rules irrelevant by taking them to the extreme.
I tried to apologize for causing such a ruckus, but my apology washed out. One of the office supervisors replied with a tirade over the possibility that one or more of my coworkers would complain, and then commented they would just have to deal with it because this is the changing world as we know it. I love my job.
