Phones in the terlet.

Time was, you wanted to hide from your boss, you had to go into the can and sequester yourself in a stall. Worked best if your boss was a different gender. Otherwise he might come in after you, yelling your name and looking for your shoes.

Back then to pass your time in seclusion you might want to slip a newspaper in your pocket or something. Office bathroom stalls often had sections of the newspaper around from previous guests.

Now everyone brings his phone into the can.

It's an improvement, actually. Makes it easier on the custodial staff to not have to cart out germy sports sections. On the other hand, guys using cell phones and wiping their butts helps lead to pathogens all over their telephones.

But the advantages to the cell phone are clear. You can read the news on the phone nowadays, but you can also play games. (I'd turn off the sound, though; Candy Crush's effects are rather distinct and not to be mistaken for noises of normal evacuation.) I do dislike when people pick up calls on the can, though.

[ring] "Hello... Oh, nothing...."

The slight tile-related echo is a dead giveaway to the person on the other end.

I'm sure we're spending too much time goofing when we are supposed to be pooping. In the bathroom we should probably all just do the necessary and get back to work instead of farting around, so to speak, with our phones. Besides, I would note that newspapers had one advantage over cell phones in bathrooms: If you run out of toilet paper, the phone is not going to make an appropriate stand-in.

Unless you don't mind having a lot of pathogens on your cell phone.