Don’t mess with Polish toilets

As I mentioned before, we had recently acquired a store of cleaning munitions. We had an old plastic toilet bowl freshener hanging on the edge of our bowl, but its freshening briquette was beyond used up. I set out to replace it! I didn’t think it would do any good hanging on the edge of the bowl above the water level, so I thought maybe I should put it in the tank. I thought I was being clever, but as usual I was not.

A Polish toilet typically has one big flusher button in the center of the tank lid, on the top of the flushing reservoir. Our dorm has especially cheap plastic tanks. I pried off the lid and heard a snap. Upon closer inspection of the lid, I found this to be the most asinine design for a toilet I’d ever come across. Thomas Crapper must be rolling over in his grave! The plunger is a straight pipe connected to the button, but is easily detachable. It lifts straight up and down during flushing action. There is another small, skinny, loose plastic piece with a hook end that is attached to the button. Apparently the hook attaches to a lever on the float, which is a plastic air-filled piece that runs vertically up and down on a plastic pole located at the side of the tank. The little hook-ended piece attaches to the float so that when the water is refilled and the float is back at its highest level, a lever pushes this plastic piece which returns the flushing button from the depressed position. I know the design well enough to draw up plans, take them to China and reverse engineer the toilet. But this would be stupid because the design is absolute stupid shit.

When I realized what an irreversible tragedy I had caused by removing the lid I aborted the original mission and set out simply to fix what I had broken. I spent a goddamn hour messing with the lid trying to put on the lid while simultaneously connecting two separate flimsy plastic pieces to the button. Impossible, I’ve only got 2 hands. You would need a remote controlled robot inside the tank, or possibly a small trained monkey to attach the pieces after the lid is replaced. The monkey would then drown itself as a result, and monkeys aren’t cheap. I tried only connecting the plunger, but then the button was stuck. I was late for meeting up with my friend. She came by and I had to explain to this pretty girl that she had to wait a few minutes, because I was busy playing in the toilet. I finally gave up, left the lid off and put up a note saying, “Stupid American broke the toilet. Remove and replace the plunger by hand for now. I’ll fix later.”

I went for a nice walk and lunch with my friend. When I returned I wanted to destroy the toilet. I could always defecate on the balcony if I had to. Instead I just pushed the lid back on with a snap and went to check my email. When I returned later to test it, miraculously, it worked! I will never remove a Polish toilet tank lid again, and I would advise you to do the same.