This story is about a Malaysian woman whose picture-perfect corporate office turned into a nightmare when she discovered her new neighbours had a toilet habit that traumatised the entire floor.
The Glossy Corporate Life
When you work in a “professional” setting, people will talk about the city centre, glass building, posh office with keycard access and free coffee. You expect everything to be, well, professional. You know, clean cubicles, polite colleagues and maybe a bit of passive-aggressive email drama at most.
My office back then was the kind of place you’d see in a LinkedIn post. Floor-to-ceiling windows, aircon so cold you could hang fish like in the North Pole and people walking around pretending they loved Excel sheets. We even had a “wellness corner” which is basically two beanbags and an artificial plant.
Everything looked perfect to me.
But no one told me that the real shocker of corporate life was waiting for me in the ladies’ loo.
The Silent Toilet-Goer
Now, I’m the type of person who treats the office toilet like a sacred zone. Go in, mind your business, leave quietly. I don’t loiter, I don’t chat and I definitely don’t make eye contact.
When I first joined that company, everything about the toilet experience was immaculate. The lemon disinfectant smell? Chef’s kiss. The tiles? So clean you could do your eyeliner using the reflection. And then there was our kakak cleaner – an absolute legend.
She was like a toilet guardian angel. You’d drop one droplet of water and suddenly, swoosh, she’d appear out of nowhere with her mop.
Life was good. The toilets were peaceful… until it wasn’t.
The New Neighbours Arrive
One day, a new foreign company moved into the office right opposite ours. HR mentioned it casually, like “Oh, new tenants coming in next week.” We didn’t think much of it, just more people to share the lift with.
But then… changes started happening.
The first thing we noticed was the smell. It wasn’t bad, just… different. Soon, whispers started flying around the pantry faster than you could microwave nasi lemak.
“Eh, toilet more smelly these days, right?”
“Maybe the cleaner got new schedule?”
“Maybe too many people using, lah.”
I brushed it off. Office toilets get busy, right? No big deal.
If only I knew what was coming.
The Day It Happened
It was a normal Tuesday. The kind of afternoon where you’re fighting food coma after lunch and pretending to work while your Excel sheet mocks you. I decided to take a quick bathroom break before my 2:30PM meeting.
As always, I headed straight to my favourite stall i.e. the last one, the squatting toilet. (All Malaysian office girls have that one stall they claim like it’s personal property. Don’t lie.)
But as I walked in, I noticed something off.
There was this faint sound of water running. Not the usual flush or tap. Continuous. Almost like… a stream.
I frowned. “Weird,” I thought. Maybe the tap rosak?
I took another step forward.
The air felt humid. There were no other footsteps. The toilet was quiet – eerily quiet – except for that steady sound of flowing water.
And then, I turned the corner.
The Smile I’ll Never Forget
There she was.
A woman — fully squatting, doing her business, with the cubicle door wide open.
She looked up. Our eyes met.
And instead of screaming or slamming the door shut like any normal person would… she smiled.
A calm, confident, “Hello and welcome to my TED Talk” kind of smile.
I froze. My brain refused to process what I was seeing.
Was she lost? Was this a prank? A hidden camera show?
The water kept running. I later realised she was using the bidet hose… continuously.
I turned and bolted out of there so fast Usain Bolt would’ve been proud. My heart was pounding, my soul had left my body and I think I aged three years in those five seconds.
The Aftermath & The Office Gossip
Outside, I stood in the corridor trying to process what just happened. My brain was buffering. Maybe she forgot to close the door? Maybe she thought no one was around?
But when I told my colleagues what I saw, their faces said it all.
“Oh, you saw them, ah?” one of them whispered.
“Ya, ya, that’s the new office people. They always do that one.”
“Do what?” I asked, horrified.
“They don’t close the door. At all.”
You could hear the collective gasp from every female colleague within 10 metres. Suddenly, our entire floor became an episode of CSI: Toilet Edition. People shared sightings, theories, and even memes.
Our poor cleaner looked permanently traumatised.
Lessons From the Loo
To this day, I still don’t understand why. Maybe cultural differences or just an insane amount of confidence levels I could only dream of.
Now, whenever I enter a new office toilet, I always knock – just in case lol.
Because in corporate life, you can survive deadlines, office politics, and even the annual review… but nothing prepares you for the horror of open-door toilet culture.
And honestly, no HR training manual could’ve saved me from that.
Read more bizarre office stories like this one:
In Real Life – Office Chronicles That’ll Make You Question Corporate Etiquette
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