CONTEMPT OF COURT
Every weekday in this building, people stand before a judge to answer for their failures: unpaid fines, overgrown lots, rental properties allowed to rot. One floor down from the courtroom where those sentences are handed out, the parish has stopped maintaining its own property entirely.
Two of the three stalls are sealed with yellow tape and a laminated notice citing a work order submitted fourteen months ago. The notice has itself begun to fade. The remaining stall has no hook on the door, so that a lawyer in a $900 suit must choose between holding his jacket in his teeth or laying it on a floor I would not recommend for that purpose.
The soap dispenser holds a pale liquid that may once have been soap and is now mostly water and memory. The paper towel holder was empty. The trash can was full. The air smelled of industrial cleaner, which suggests that somebody, at some point, attempted something.
Above the sink hangs a framed sign thanking visitors for "respecting this facility." The facility has given visitors nothing to respect. If a private landlord kept a building in this condition, he would be standing upstairs in front of a judge, and the judge would be right to throw the book at him. I recommend the parish appear before itself and enter a plea.
SCORE: 1 plunger. The bailiff gave me directions, and was polite about it.