Cleaning the Bathroom with the Confederate Flag
The vast majority of customers come into my store on a mission to complete a project. A lot of these folks are excited by their tasks and it’s quite inspiring! It makes me wish I had more home improvement projects of my own to work on. I was even tempted the other day to buy a bag of bulbs and plant them to beautify the yard of my rented half-house. I haven’t yet, but there’s still time in the Fall planting season.
Yesterday morning, my toilet broke. Water was spewing out of the top lid of the tank with every flush. Not a stopping up problem. Not a won’t-stop-running problem. Not a little-chain-thingie-coming-loose-from-handle-thingie problem. This was weird and different. It was early in the morning, and although I opened the tank and looked at the mysterious workings on the inside, I could not discern the problem. I flushed again and water came spurting out sideways from the top of that toilet tower thingie on the left hand of the tub. It was early, I needed to get to work and I’d only had one cup of coffee. My renter instinct of call-the-landlord was my first thought.
One problem though. My bathroom was filthy. I mean, disgustingly, mildewy, faintly urine smelling nasty. I once said in a video (which you can see at the end), “I’m the kind of guy who only cleans my apartment when people are coming over,” it has been a while since I’ve bothered to clean the bathroom. I couldn’t have the landlord or his handyman over with the condition of my bathroom.
Aha! Not just one, but TWO projects! First: see if I can fix the toilet without having to buy any expensive parts. Second: clean the bathroom.
I broached the toilet subject at work with one of my plumbing expert colleagues and learned about cool things like “overflow pipes” and “ballcocks”. Better yet, I got to shopping on the retail chemistry set that is the “cleaning supplies” aisle at my home improvement warehouse employer, on the day after payday, no less. If you read my blog a couple weeks ago, you read how I last celebrated payday: a 42” plasma HDTV. I didn’t go quite as far on the cleaning supplies aisle, but I was gathering quite an armful of different kinds of brushes, gloves and chemicals. For the mildewy shower problem, I went with the “this stuff is so strong, you’ll probably want to leave the house after applying” strategy.
You may have also read recently in my blog about how I was involved in a customer accident at my store. I leveled a little old lady with a refrigerator. I swear, I had nothing to do with the next accident, but once again, a little old lady was attacked by one of our products.
I was thinking I had completed my haul there on the cleaning supplies aisle late last night when one of the uppity young supervisors appeared with a camera in hand.
“Alright, Joko, what happened?” he asked.
“What Whaddya mean?”
“The little old lady who got injured here. Did you see what happened?”
“What? No! I’m just doing some personal shopping!”
“Well,” the supervisor continued, “apparently, one of these cans of oven cleaner fell of the shelf as she was walking by and struck her in the face,” he explained as he took pictures of how the spray cans of oven cleaner were merchandised at about 6 and a half feet above the ground.
Again, I professed my innocence and went back to my department to stash my haul for the soon arriving closing time. I passed by the front of the store where the little old lady was receiving medical attention from the local fire department. 
She had a big red welt on her cheek.
One would think cans of oven cleaner would stay put on their shelves, but apparently, this stuff was easy off.
Arriving home, applying the advice I got from my plumbing experts, I fixed the toilet in all of about 10 seconds. No need to call the landlord now. But what about all my cleaning supplies?!
Well, I completed the cleaning project anyways. You could now eat off the tile in my bathroom.
A video intermission from four years ago, the first of two occasions I cleaned my bathroom for a YouTube video.
* * *
On a more serious note, an anecdote from today really made me think about race relations, symbolism and heritage.
I had just sold a chest freezer to a customer and was rolling it out into the parking lot on a hand truck to help the guy load it. The customer happened to be African-American.
As we were heading towards his vehicle, a pick up truck pulled past us. Two young white guys with identical scraggly beards, baseball caps, and tank tops were in the cab. They were quite scrawny with comparatively big adam’s apples. A couple red necks. The entire back window of the truck was blocked by a gigantic Confederate battle flag.
Mind you, I’m writing from just north of Seattle in Washington State. We’re as “blue” of a state as they come. Whereas these two fellas in their pick up truck wouldn’t have been a strange thing to see in Texas, Arkansas or Georgia, we don’t see too many of these types on this side of Cascade Mountains.
I can’t speak personally as to what it might feel like for a Black man to see the Confederate flag so proudly displayed in a place that was not only never part of the Confederacy, but wasn’t even a state during the Civil War. If I were in his shoes, I’d be angered by such a symbol of, well, slavery. Here was the banner representing the height of the subjugation of his ancestors.
In my last quarter of school earlier this year, I took a course in “working with diverse populations”. Basically, a course in diversity training. We spent a week talking about the phenomenon of “White guilt.” I won’t go into it in detail, suffice to say that after this truck passed I was feeling it walking next to my customer. I was embarrassed for my race that such idiots would parade around such insensitivity as advertisement on their vehicle. Basically, what that flag tells the world is “I’m a racist and damn proud of it!”
“Well,” my customer noted thankfully tying to break the awkward moment, “you don’t see flags like THAT that often around here.”
“Nope,” I replied, “I bet they were wearing mesh baseball caps too.”
I wish I had thought of something more poignant to say at that moment. See, another thing I learned in my diversity training is not tolerating intolerance. We, of all races, need to step up when racism is exhibited in any form and say, ‘No, that is wrong’. I wanted to be more vehement in expressing my distaste for what we saw hanging in the back of that truck. I wanted to not to ameliorate my “white guilt,” not to apologize for my race, but because it would have been the right thing to say about a very wrong thing to see.
I wish had that Confederate flag to clean the old pee and mildew off my bathroom floor. That’s about all it’s good for in my book.
They are everywhere. Go buy a Confederate flag, make an instructional video for Joko’s Do It Yourself Network (or similar hook) using a southern hick accent in the narrative as you clean your toilet (put some molasses in the bowl for gross effect) and upload it to You Tube… Maybe even burn it at the end as the credits roll in the foreground with “Dixie” playing in the background.
Ignorance like that would survive a nuclear winter, just like cockroaches.
I love the theme of little old lady accidents. You’re a bent individual. I hope they are only tales. 😈
“I wish had that Confederate flag to clean the old pee and mildew off my bathroom floor. That’s about all it’s good for in my book”.
What’s with all the subtlety suddenly J……. 🙄 ……lol
Bean Counters figure that with tall shelves, they can cram more stuff into a store. They forget that short people, like little old ladies, can get hit in the face with an item when trying to get it off of a tall top shelf. Bean Counters should also know that lawsuits cost money. Moreover, Bean Counters should know that short shelves increase visibility throughout the store, and discourage customer theft.
CSA : Corporate States of America
Down here they’ve got more confederate flags than American flags. They sat it’s a matter of respect for southern heritage, but then those same folks always seem to get outraged when black history month rolls around. I guess some heritages are more equal than others. 😥
Beautiful blog Joko
You have done it again. I didn’t see the serious and meaningful commentary coming. Love it.
I would like to say that people SAY their bathroom floor is clean enough to eat off of but few actually do.
I loved your blog Joko…..your to much…..by the way looking very handsome Joko 😉 ….the squirrel too…lol!
Damn it, Man.
Why you leavin us hangin?
So, What was wrong with the Toilet?
On Racism, That is one Damn Complex issue.
Most people that fly the Confederate Battle Flag do so out of a Southern Rock culture and do not see it as Racism at all. They see it as a display of Southern pride.
Couldn’t watch the vid, with the still of what appears to be a hirsute nipple as the first image. My favorite phrase to someone I might be interested in? “Wax it.”
I am beggining to wonder if your past legal issue (which I am unaware of how such ended) had something to do with a anti-female bias? What is the opposite of an Oedipus complex – an Ajase, Electra, or Telemachus complex?
First of all, I am only 5’2″ so if I am lucky, I will one day be one of those little old ladies who struggle in the stores……and I am going to avoid you like the plague! 😯 LOL Heck! I am one of those “little ladies” who struggle in the stores NOW!I have stood on milk crates and taken things off of the bottom shelves in order to stand on them so I can reach things off of the higher shelves. I have to do this in the event there aren’t any tall guys around to help me. (You would think asking a guy to help you reach something off of a high grocery store shelf would be a good ice breaker but it never went farther then “Here ya go.” 😛 LOL) I sometimes feel like Spiderman…or Spiderwoman…as I scale the supermarket shelves in order to reach my needed items. I do, however, recommend grabbing a toilet bowl brush (clean and unused of course) from the cleaning aisle to knock the items off of the shelf if climbing can be a dangerous option. For the record, I have gotten hit in the face with falling boxes of cereal, tissues, toilet paper, and other assorted items in my pursuit of reaching for the heights (literally) in stores so it’s not recommended but if you REALLY need those Pop Tarts or those Cocoa Puffs, ya gotta do what you gotta do! 8)
I also give kudos to anyone to whom cleaning their bathroom becomes an event that is both blogworthy and video worthy. 😆 😆 😆 (BTW, they both were great and very entertaining. 🙂 )
And I give you credit for what you said in regards to the confederate flag and that whole incident that happened. Some people just can’t manage to pry their heads out of their arses long enough to realize that time has moved on and it ain’t so cool anymore to think anyone isn’t as good as you are just because they aren’t the same color, religion or ethnicity as you are. 😐
Good story Joko. Lots of things to think about.
At 3:06 on that video I swear you looked like Charlie Sheen.
I do enjoy your writing, your stories, Joko. I just wish people who are not southerners would stop equating rebel flags with slavery. Frankly, it’s just silly.