Despite the "yearly bath" jokes I am bound to elicit, this story needs to be shared.
A while ago, we ran out of liquid soap in the liquid soap dispenser in the girls bathroom at work. Our supplier was bought out and the new owners are unwilling to cross-reference numbers to search for our refill. We girls have been bringing in our bath and body works specials for a couple of weeks now, and I finally decided that there is no reason that we couldn't buy some at the local soap-ateria and refill it ourselves.
After a quick trip to pick up the soap, I marched into the bathroom and prepared to refill. I started slow, as any fairly intelligent person would, making sure everything looked ok. I poured the soap directly into the hole in the first compartment (the "refill" part that we would purchase full of soap) and watched the soap slide down to the second compartment where it could be dispensed by pushing in the lever located toward the bottom of the dispenser. All worked well, but it was a slow process.
After I decided that this was definitely working, and since the top compartment used to arrive full of soap, I decided to go ahead and fill the top compartment with the store bought soap and leave it to funnel down on its own.
And it did. It began filling the second compartment nicely, just I had planned.
What I had not planned, was the fountain of soap now spilling down the mirror. About an inch thick and as wide as the soap dispenser. I thought that perhaps the top portion had an overflow and I had overfilled it and it would stop once it got past that point. It didn't. As I tried catching as much of the soap in the soap bottle as I could, I realized this was not going to stop. The flowing fountain of soap was clearly out of control and we were low on paper towels in the bathroom.
I ran to the office in search of more paper towels laughing so hard I drew the attention of the receptionist and one of the partners. When questions, all I could respond was "It won't stop!" Since the receptionist new of my endeavors, she quickly figured out I was referring to the soap.
I managed to clean up the initial mess, and with the bathroom (and my hands) smelling strongly of SoftSoap(r) I returned to the office and informed the staff that there was still a small drip, but it should subside shortly.
3 1/2 hours later, I think it is done.
The partner announced that he would be sure I never had to be backup maintenance person; the ladies thanked me for making the bathroom smell pretty; and the antibacterial soap on my hands should last for about a week.