One day while I was in the operating room, I overheard two nurses talking. She said . . . That experience made me think about how men interact with each other under many conditions, and I realized that there are unspoken, but still rigid and powerful, guidelines that govern how men relate to each other.
Men usually speak to each other only for a specific reason, to accomplish a well-defined task.
They call each other to order lumber, to arrange a meeting, to negotiate the price of a product, and so on. It's these general guidelines that helped shape the very specific, time-honored, and inflexible rules of behavior in a men's room. This first rule determines all the others. Men go to the bathroom only to perform their bodily functions. During that time, the privacy of each man is inviolable.