Doing My Business at My Place of Business

I take my bathroom time seriously.  Sometimes during the work day, it's the only few minutes where I can let myself relax, not having to be "on."  The bathroom becomes a place of solitude, my hideout from the ever increasing demands of the day.  Nobody can reach me in the bathroom.  They can try, but I probably won't answer.  If I can swindle my iPhone into the bathroom stall without being busted and judged by germaphobes, I can usually get a few turns of WordsWithFriends, the Scrabble game, in so long as I'm sitting in the stall that allows internet access.   Sometimes that work bathroom time is the best time I'll have all day to respond to an email or read an article on People.com.   I've never gone so far as to actually have a phone conversation while in a bathroom stall as, for starters, the sounds of flushing clearly gives away where I am and second, I don't want anybody else listening in on my conversation.  Also, I have something equivalent to stage fright when someone comes into the stall(s) next to me.  That said, I envy the people that can go in to the bathroom and freely do their business no matter how crowded the bathrooms are, no matter who is listening in the stall next door and have no worries about how long a particular bathroom trip might take them.

There's only one major issue I have with the bathroom stalls at work.  The cleaning lady, who comes five days a week to the office, is always in the bathroom when I need to get in there.  The majority of the time she's in there, she's not really cleaning.  Often, she is on her cell phone and I feel like I'm interrupting her when I have to charge into a stall and do my thing, particularly since this happens about twice a day.  Blame it on the coffee.  I often wonder who she's chatting with on the phone, if they know that she's in a bathroom, or mind all of the incessant flushing of the automatic toilets.  I've gotten over that she probably thinks I spend way too much time in the bathroom.  My biggest problem, is when she decides to mop.  Because it's always when I'm in a stall for a while.  And sometimes she must forget that I'm there, because she mops right under my stall, to the point where I have to lift my feet up to prevent her mop from hitting my legs.  It's such pressure to coordinate doing my business in the bathroom with lifting my feet in time to avoid getting whacked with a mop.

Besides the cleaning lady, the only other awkwardness comes when running into colleagues in the bathroom.  Especially when you coincidentally walk into the bathroom together, and end up in side by side stalls.  I often will immediately exit the bathroom just to avoid a situation like this, opting to go to a different floor or even holding it until they exit.  I realize this is ludicrous.  Everyone needs the bathroom.  At the same time, nobody wants to see, hear or smell what you do in there.

Have you had any awkward run ins at your bathrooms at work?  How do you deal with running into people in the bathroom?  Am I the only lunatic who things about these things?