Bathroom Sign of the Times

A small, privately owned restaurant in Tampa, Florida’s Ybor City district is serving up delectable barbecue with a Mexican flare as well as contention amongst the local customer pool.

Meet Felix Briones, proprietor and head chef at Cilantroversy. The customer area of the small eatery consists of order/pick-up counters, a chilled dessert case, and a handful of tables where patrons can enjoy their chipotle ribs or pulled pork quesadillas off parchment-lined metal trays. Oh, and then there’s two restrooms to the left of the order counter. And while the food is absolutely to die for, it’s the restrooms that seem to be getting all the attention.

“We just wanted to make sure people knew everyone was accepted here at Cilantroversy,” tells Briones, “which is near the corner of 8th and 15th street, conveniently located by the trolley station. I didn’t realize that would upset so many people.”

“Things have gotten really stupid here lately,” says Marisol Suarez, who works the order counter and prepares side dishes. “Sometimes I just want to come in and sling pico and take orders, not talk about the freakin’ bathroom sign ninety times a day!”

To clarify, Briones recently decided to make both restrooms, which only house one standard toilet and sink apiece, gender-neutral. In that vein, he also purchased new signs for the doors that displayed the conventional genders (man, woman, some kind of man-woman hybrid, children, and disabled) as well as several other whimsical or fantastical “genders”, including alien, mermaid, robot, centaur, anthropomorphic hotdog, and Santa Claus. The text of the sign reads “WHATEVER, JUST WASH YOUR HANDS”.

While the intentions are clearly virtuous, some Cilantroversy customers aren’t happy with the message.

“All I want shoved down my throat in this restaurant is an order of brisket tacos!” says patron Chris Morris, “not the owner’s woke agenda!”

“I thought this restaurant served Tex-Mex cuisine,” says local foodie Carol Bryant, “but all I see here is communist propaganda!”

“The only hot take I wanna experience in that bathroom,” says Daniel Ward, a guy who stands in the street smoking cigars all day and smells exactly what you’d think a person who does that smells like, “is when I take a hot BM without buying anything!”

“It’s absolutely disgusting,” adds Morris, “to put up a sign that implies all genders are welcome to use this bathroom, just as long as they wash their hands! I’m sorry, but nobody has the right to tell me to wash my hands!”

Yes, it seems that Briones’s new signs have stirred up quite the outcry amongst a particular crowd: Those who feel they’re being stripped of their God-given right to not wash their hands after using the bathroom.

“It’s shameful is what it is!” says Carol Bryant. “I have my kid here with me! How do I explain to her that some people find this behavior acceptable?”

Bryant’s small daughter could not comment over her hacking coughs.

“There’s nothing in the first amendment that says I have to wash my hands,” says Daniel Ward through a wet cigar stub held on one side of his mouth, “or any other part of my anatomy for that matter!”

“It’s my body, my choice!” shouts Chris Morris, slamming a fist onto the table as a group of young women rush off to find seats farther away, side-eying him as they go. “Besides, I can just say my hands identify as clean.”

Ugh, somebody's always gotta make that joke.

“First it's handwashing, next they'll tell us we have to wear shoes!” says Bryant, whose bare soles are as black as her daughter's lungs sound. “Also why is there a cow on the sign? Cows don't even have hands! Do they want it to wash its hooves? Stupid!”

“That sign’s not the boss of me!” says Berto Jiménez, a line cook at Cilantroversy. “They can’t make me wash my hands!”

Unfortunately for owner Felix Briones, the anger over the restroom sign has now spilled over into social media.

“I guess there’s like this big anti-handwashing community on Facebook,” he says, “because of course there is. Anyway, someone, probably that woman whose kid sounds like a pre-safety regulation coal miner over there, posted a pic of the sign in one of the groups and they got all pissy about it.”

But, as Briones and his staff tell it, the outcry from people typing their dissent on the keys of the most unsanitary keyboards imaginable notwithstanding, there has been no discernible drop in business.

“People come in here all the time,” says counter worker Marisol Suarez, “saying stuff like ‘go clean, lose the green!’ or ‘wash up and you’ll be washed up!’. So corny, like as corny as our delicious Mexican street corn which I can’t recommend enough. They’ll even be saying that stuff while the restaurant is so crowded we can barely hear it!”

“It’s so weird,” adds Briones, “that this stupid bathroom sign is dominating the conversation about our restaurant when it’s really only a vocal few who even care. Also, before you go, can you please just tell me what Berto said to you right before you threw out your parrillada platter?”

Felix Briones assures us that, despite the controversy (oh my God, Cilantroversy! I just got that!), the “WHATEVER, JUST WASH YOUR HANDS” bathroom signs aren’t going anywhere.

“I don’t care if some people are mad about it.” he says. “And honestly, are those seriously the type of people we want to cater to? Besides, I really glued that thing on there and I think it’ll mess up the door if I try to take it off now. We don’t have a regular maintenance guy you know.”

Before we depart Cilantroversy, we just have to ask: Is seriously nobody upset about trans people being allowed to use the same bathroom as non-trans people!?

We ask this burning question as Daniel Ward is walking out of the restroom, adjusting his pants with one unwashed hand while fishing yet another damp half-cigar out of his shirt pocket with the other, and he obliges us with an answer:

“Why would anybody care about trans or gender nonconforming people using the same bathroom as cisgendered folk? It’s 2025 for God’s sake, what fuckin’ loser even still cares about that shit!?”

Well there you have it.