At the sound of the flush, please leave a message.

This past March I returned to work in an office after having spent the past two years enjoying the lifestyle of the independent consultant, which is to say getting up when I pleased and working at my desk in my boxers (on a good day, anyway). Ah, good times.

Anyway, in the months that I have been back "working for the man," I have been fascinated and repulsed by something I have observed on an almost daily basis: guys make, receive, and continue cell phone conversations through the entire course of doing their business in the men's room. I'm no stickler for etiquette, believe me, but there is something utterly mortifying about that. At the very least, I have a clear mental list of people whose cell phones I will never ask to borrow.

Call me old fashioned, but I am of the view that the cell phone's place in the men's room is as a means to play Yahtzee or Bubblet. Am I part of some prudish minority on this one? Mind you, the people in my building are not surgeons or magnates. These are not split-second, life-or-death decisions these people are discussing, so urgency isn't the issue. Well, not as far as the cell phone conversations go, anyway.