There’s never a dull moment here at Cafe Mint. If it’s not Benny Brewster spilling his coffee all over the floor in a bout of over-enthusiastic gossiping, it’s Candice Merriman’s labrador sneaking several cream buns out of the display cabinet. Then, of course, there’s the Brewster twins, who leave a trail of chaos wherever they go. Unfortunately for me, that includes the bathrooms here at the cafe.
Who’d have thought a couple of two year-olds could wreak so much havoc in just a few square meters of space, with relatively few objects that aren’t firmly affixed to the floor? Well, turns out there’s a lot of mess you can make with a few rolls of toilet paper, a dispenser of liquid hand soap, and assorted other items you probably don’t need in your mental image bank.
It’s not the Brewsters’ fault, exactly. Either mum or dad is always present with them in the bathroom. I guess the problem is that there are two kids, both equally rambunctious and always determined to do everything as a pair. Because of the way the bathrooms are set up, only one parent can be present at any one potty time. So while one kid is being assisted to do their business, the other has a golden opportunity to run amok.
Perhaps this needs to be taken up with bathroom designers around Melbourne. Surely there’s a way to design bathrooms that can provide for people in this sticky situation – quite literally, it often ends up sticky once the entire soap dispenser has been emptied and used as paste for attaching cupcake crumbs to the walls. Then again, twins aren’t all that common, and the numbers for those that are as troublesome as the Brewster kids would be smaller still.
What am I, a cafe owner, supposed to do about this? Cough up for bathroom refurbishment every time the family comes into the cafe? Add the costs to their bill? Or simply ask them to kindly refrain from coming in until the twins have passed through this phase? I mean, I hope it’s a phase.