I recently had an amusing experience in the men's room at work. I went in, took care of my business and went to unlock the door to the stall and leave.

click.
Uh oh, it's stuck.
click click click click
Argh, the lock won't turn.
bang bang
No use.

But wait -- there was someone else in the restroom, washing his hands. Who was it? Someone I know? Someone I can ask for help? Wait a minute -- ask for help? How pathetic is that? "Er, excuse me. Yeah, yeah, you. See, I'm kind of, uh, stuck in here. Can you fetch some help?" I thought of Lassie, and the cliché scene in which communicates someone's distress to that telepathic little boy. "What's that Lassie? Someone is trapped in a restroom stall?!" I decided against asking for help. Besides, what possible help could anyone offer me; the lock was on the inside.

After considering that, there remained only one question: over or under? I pondered this as the anonymous hand washer finished up and left. I sat in the silence of the empty restroom for a moment. I had the almost irrepressible urge to pound on the door and scream "HELP! HELP! GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

The gap from the floor to the bottom of the door measured about a foot and half and the door extended upwards about 6 feet high. With very few footholds, the door would not be trivial to scale, but I decided that would be a preferable alternative to crawling on the restroom floor, even though it was relatively clean as far as restrooms go. I stood on the toilet, placed a hand on the side wall of the stall for support, and leapt towards the door. I grabbed the top of the door with both hands, supporting myself. With my upper body leaning over the top of the door, I just had to swing my legs over and I'd be free. Almost there. Then I hear the restroom door start to open.

shit.

To avoid the humiliating indignity of having some management type see their sysadmin hanging halfway over the restroom door, I decided to drop back down and pretend everything was normal. Nothing to see here, move along. As I sat and waited for the urinator to finish up, I was struck by the absurdity of the situation and laughter began to swell up inside me. A muffled giggle quickly turned into outright, unrestrained laughter. The urinator must have been thoroughly bewildered by what I could have possibly found so comical about going to the restroom (and this thought, of course, only served to make me laugh even harder).

As soon as the urinator left, I quickly hopped back onto the toilet, grabbed the wall, and launched myself over the door in one swift motion, ninja style. I washed my hands and quickly made my exit, chuckling to myself.

I think I'll avoid that stall in the future...