I Am an Embarrassment to Myself

This is a photo of the top of the men's bathroom door in the Leadership and Social Responsibility Office.  I have used this bathroom at least once every day for the past 19 days that I have been in the office working (I think the record was 5 times in 1 day on a day I somehow drank 2 cups of coffee and 3 bottles of water).  Somehow, in these past 19 days in the office, I failed to notice the women's bathroom next door to this one...

I am pretty sure any other person in the world would have realized this was a men's bathroom and NOT a women's bathroom.   For starters, there is a sticker of a man on the corner of the door.  How did I miss this sticker?  I have a few hypotheses:

• Hypothesis 1:  I have a vision impairment (or perhaps I have selective vision since I am quite confident I already have selective hearing)
• Hypothesis 2:  I am very short (vertically challenged) so perhaps I never looked up high enough to see the man sticker in the corner.
• Hypothesis 3:  I am oblivious to everything.
• Hypothesis 4:  I quite much enjoy reading signs in different languages, so I might have been so distracted every time I entered the bathroom by the "Personeel Alleenlik", I didn't notice the man sticker.
• Hypothesis 5:  I saw the sticker of the man, but thought this must obviously imply that any person (regardless of gender) was welcome and therefore assumed this was a bathroom for human beings.  Yes, a bit bizarre, but I think my student affairs classes have cultivated me to be more inclusive.

Regardless of which of these hypotheses is accurate (I'll let you decide for yourself), there is one other aspect that makes it even more silly that I have used the men's restroom everyday for the past 19 work days.  Every, and I repeat, EVERY time I have used the bathroom, the toilet seat has been left up. 

Yes.

I know.

Pathetic.

I actually thought about it once, and remember actively thinking that maybe this was a cultural difference between the States and South Africa; although women get very cranky when men leave the toilet seat up back home, I thought perhaps it was a polite act to do here or something showing respect for men.  In fact...I actually started to put the seat up again after I was done, thinking this might be the appropriate thing to do.

Yes.

I know.

I am an embarrassment to myself.

--Kaity