Royal Flush: Trader Joe's

Grocery store bathrooms tend to scare me into testing the strength of either my thighs, as I squat like my life depends on it, or my bladder, as I decide the possibility of wetting myself is more appealing than spending another moment in such a grotesque hellhole. I think it’s that they’re generally rarely used and even more rarely cleaned. They’re also not necessarily easy to find - I’ve been to some that required walking through a meat locker.

The bathroom at Trader Joe’s is neither hard to find or terrifying. If you walk into the store and make the first left available to you, you’re there. And you’ll be happy, just like I was when I did my grocery shopping last Saturday. It’s beautiful and clean and it smells like air freshener, but the kind that says “We care,” not “We’re hiding dead bodies in here.” How often can you go to a grocery store and find a bathroom with a cute wooden end table, a vase filled with fresh flowers, a pretty mirror, and tile mosaic? Let alone, all of those things plus a clean, operating toilet and ample toilet paper/paper towels/soap? Not often, my friends, not often at all.

So, go buy yourselves some reasonably-priced groceries, a granny cart if you need one (I got one, named her “Shirley Louise,” and didn’t quite steer her over bumps, but was overjoyed that I didn’t have to fight with tearing bags on my walk home), and check out the bathrooms – if for no other reason than to admire their lovely artwork.

Image via preventharm.org.