Imagethief's office in Shanghai is in the middling-swank K. Wah Center on the middling-swank (and appropriately named) Huaihai Middle Road. Here we work in splendid isolation from the rest of our WPP brethren, based just up the road in The Center. We had to be different.

K. Wah Center has some idiosyncrasies, including apparently being named after some kind of hip-hop infant. Among these are the world's shrillest elevators. They look nice and all, but when they arrive at any floor they make a wine-glass pulverizing beep that can be heard through the main door, across the lobby, down the hall and clear into my office, where it causes my corneas to crack.

Also, we have had some bathroom trouble. The problem was that people were smoking in the stalls and pissing on the floor, which, I am sure you'll agree, is unpleasant. Our building management was thoughtfully on hand with a solution. In order to keep unauthorized riffraff (read: couriers and delivery people) from tarnishing our toilets and molesting the girls in the ladies' room, they installed a cardkey access system. Henceforth only people from our company and the one other tenant on our floor would be able to use the bathroom. Our office was given five or six cardkeys to be kept at reception. On the way out you'd just grab one, swipe your way into the bathroom, and go about your business in sanitary splendor.

Fine in theory. In practice there were some hitches. First, the cardkey system was wonky. I found I had to swipe my card repeatedly, sometimes five or six times, before the door would unlock. At one point, building management decided they needed to issue more keys. They also decided, when they did this, that it would make sense to change the systems password and, just to be extra secure, not tell anyone. So all the keys stopped working completely. Accustomed as we were to having to swipe multiple times for the door to open, the hallway was clogged with people cross-eyed from stretched bladders swiping their cards repeatedly in vain attempts to get the door to open. It was like watching lab rats working the button on the cocaine dispensing machine long after the cocaine has stopped flowing. I would have chuckled in knowledgeable smugness if I hadn't been cocaine rat number one, slowly wearing my card away on the reader.

Be warned. We are now entering firmly into "overshare" territory. Imagethief is sometimes accused by his friends and traveling companions of having a weak bladder. This is wicked slander. The truth is more nuanced: I drink a lot of water and appreciate being unburdened. Also, long years in Asia have taught me to take advantage of a useable bathroom when one is handy, as the next one along might be hip deep in shit.

When I work, and especially when I write, I tend to disregard certain bodily signals such as "eat", "sleep" and "piss now or die like Tycho Brahe". I'll only notice that I have to go when my bladder reaches melon-size and my kidneys are threatening blow out the small of my back. When I hit that threshold I have to go immediately.

It is, thus, inconvenient to find that the codes for every bathroom in the building have been changed. My ire was large, if not as large as my bladder. I should have gone in one of the obnoxious, head-splitting elevators. That would have showed them. The good news is that I gained an extra liter of capacity that will serve me well in future emergencies. I also gained a new appreciation for chamber pots although, as regressive as it sounds, I think it's against WPP policy to keep one in your office. I am checking on that.

But the irony of the situation is that, despite the swish new locks, the bathrooms are as miserable as ever. The floor in front of the urinals is still a swamp and cigarette smoke still wafts over the cubicles and stings my eyes. The truth is that it wasn't delivery people and couriers who were trashing the bathrooms. It was us all along. (I can't speak for the masher-factor. It is possible that incidents of slavering, camera-phone wielding maniacs in the ladies room have plummeted, in which case it was all worth it.)

Contemporary with the bathroom locks, the building management stopped letting restaurant delivery people come up to the offices to make drop-offs. I order food when I am busy. When I am busy I do not want to go down to the lobby to pick up my sandwich. I want it to make it all the way up to my company's reception desk and into my office. All I want to do is grunt in acknowledgment while I keep typing. Given that despite all the new security measures the bathroom is still a swampy, smoky wreck, I think we can go easy on the delivery people.

The whole situation reminds of the sentiment I so often see expressed in Chinglish signs in Beijing: We apologize for any convenience.

As well they should.

Note: Title with apologies to Captain Oliver Hazard Perry by way of Walt Kelly.