Fred Meyer, 930 Old Steese Highway, Fairbanks, Alaska
In Dante’s “Inferno,” the flatterers lie in pits of human excrement, the diviners have their heads turned the wrong way, and the sowers of discord are perpetually cleaved in two. Dante doesn’t specify a place for perpetrators of bad bathroom design. I propose they be sent to Fred Meyer East in Fairbanks with an infant sporting a poopy diaper.
The problem isn’t the lack of a changing table, and to Fred Meyer’s credit, the table in the women’s room is fairly consistently clean. Instead, the bathroom’s layout makes changing a diaper a problem for everyone. The changing table blocks the main traffic flow from the stalls to the sink. If you use the changing table, you become an obstacle.
Anyone unlucky enough to be using the sink when a mama unfolds the table is trapped. Anyone desiring to wash her hands after coming out of the stall has to wait. Adding to the problem, the mama’s butt becomes a target for the swinging door. If you have more than one kid with you, you have a dilemma: do you let one stand near you and get brained by the door while you change the other or do you lock the loose child in a nearby stall and hope they don’t put their hands in the toilet.
Rather than push a full cart of groceries down the narrow hallway to the bathroom only to be smacked by the door, I’ve resorted to changing the girls in the cart. I recommend the oft-deserted bedding aisle for on the go diaper changes. I just take something flat from the cart, set it up on top. Boxes of diapers or packs of paper towels make great improv changing tables.
For the daddies out there, all I know about the men’s bathroom is that my husband walked back out and took our daughter to the car after seeing the state of the changing table in the there. He hasn’t spoken of it since.
If you’re looking for diaper change utopia, try elsewhere. If you’re looking for potential hepatitis and a bruised ass, “You’ll Find It At Fred Meyer.”
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