Today at work, I received this memo from our commander-in-chief:

Gentlemen

Some of you know that the urinal in the Corvus men’s room will occasionally get stuck in the “flush” position and overflow onto the floor. When it occurs (once or twice a year at this point), the only remedy (short of shutting off all water to the building) is the following:

1. Grab or grasp the flathead screwdriver above the bathroom’s fluorescent light fixture.
2. Remove the chrome “nut” (no comments necessary) – that should be only finger tight – from the front of the urinal plumbing.
3. Turn the embedded screw clockwise until the water to the urinal is shut off and the overflow ceases.
4. Look down at your now-wet shoes and quietly mutter “damn”.
5. With the screwdriver, tap on the bulbous area behind the nut (again – no comment necessary) to loosen any hard water particles that may have caused the overflow in the first place.
6. Carefully – turn the water back on, replace the nut and go on about your business. If for some reason, it begins to overflow again, shut it back off, make and post appropriate signage and contact the local authorities.

By working together comrades, we can assure a dry shoe future for ourselves and future generations.

(And by the way, if someone accidentally removes the official Corvus men’s room flathead screwdriver from it’s appointed place, we may find ourselves, literally, up sh*t creek without a paddle – well… p*ss creek anyway.)

BTW, I should note that where he mentions “turning the water off to the entire building” is not only funny, but entirely true — and yes, we scrambled to find a screwdriver the first couple of times it happened.