EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO FIX THIS ROOM IS FORTY FEET AWAY

The customer restroom sits behind aisle 31, past the lumber and the bags of concrete mix, in a corner the store would prefer you forget. A hand-lettered sign points the way. The arrow on it points in the wrong direction.

Inside, the toilet seat is cracked straight down the middle, so that sitting on it carries the risk of a pinch you will remember. The faucet drips with the steady patience of a water torture. The overhead fluorescent tube flickers in an irregular rhythm that I began, after a few seconds, to suspect was a distress signal in Morse code. The grout is gray. The caulk around the sink has come loose and curls upward like old tape.

Here is the part that matters. In aisle 14, this store sells replacement toilet seats for $24.97. In aisle 15, faucet cartridges and washers. In aisle 9, light fixtures, with a 20 percent discount for loyalty members. Aisle 22 has caulk, grout cleaner and the tools to apply both. Every single part needed to restore this room to dignity sits on the store's own shelves, under the store's own roof, about forty feet away.

Nobody has thought to carry any of it over. This is not neglect. Neglect is ignorance. This is a parable about the American workplace, in which everyone has the tools and nobody has the assignment.

SCORE: 2 plungers. Points for the irony, which was free.