Kohler, WI - Part One

Posted by John

So here I am in Kohler, Wisconsin as we speak. Day one has been mostly travel and a bunch of presentations on all their new products. The big plant tour that I’ve been looking forward to like a dog in heat at the local canine park is tomorrow morning.

I appreciate everyone that provided me with more ideas on how to inject suggestive poop innuendo into my every word and action, many of which I was jealous for not thinking of myself. For instance, I’m going to ask the tour guide, “So can you guys manufacture a toilet with a larger flush hole? My wife is tired of me messing up all the broom handles at the house.”

Or if the factory has a second story I’m going to refer to it as the upper deck. “Earlier you mentioned that the flush valve is manufactured on the second floor. So that makes it an upper decker, correct?”

In fact, I’m going to refer to any level above me as the upper deck.

Stewardess: “Sir, will you be checking that luggage?”

Me: “Nope. It’ll go in the upper deck luggage compartment.”

Or

Hotel Clerk: “Here is the key to your room, which is number 201.”

Me: “Nice. I like sleeping in the upper deck.”

Or

Me, to the tour guide on my way out of the plant: “So just to let you know, I left an upper decker somewhere in this factory. It’s your job to find it.”

No doubt the plant will have a cafeteria of some sort where I can go around loudly and obnoxiously criticizing all the food choices:

“Cheese? You honestly have a cheese bar here??? Oh, I get it – this is Wisconsin and cheese is your thing, but seriously, what are trying to do to me? You’re a toilet manufacturer; do you not want me using your products??? Wait, is this seriously a cow that you are carving up right before my eyes? You are actually carving the meat off the cow’s hide as we speak? Honestly what is your goal here? I’m so confused. I mean, I’m typically as regular as a Republican congressional sex scandal; now you’re going to go feeding me a bunch of cheese and bovine meat. What do you expect? I’m going to be plugged up for a week!”

But like I said, all of that is for tomorrow. I figured my expectation for this trip was pretty high coming into it so I thought I should come up with some sort of metric to determine if it actually lives up to that expectation. Therefore I decided I will be keeping tabs on a scale of 1 to 10 turds, with 1 turd being pretty shitty and 10 turds being pretty awesome, to evaluate the overall trip. It’ll start out at 5 turds and it can either go up or down from there depending on how the trip progresses.

The day got off to a pretty bad start because the flight they booked for me was at 6 AM. When I got out of bed at 4 AM, which used to be a bedtime for me, not a time to wake up, I immediately thought, “I’m docking you guys 1 turd right off the bat, this is too goddamn early, even to go talk about poop for two days.”

Now, I consider myself a pretty efficient traveler and I don’t like to get to the airport any sooner than I have to but admittedly this morning I was cutting it really close. I didn’t even park my care until 45 minutes before the flight was scheduled to take off and I was actually a little worried I’d miss the flight. How the hell was I going to explain to someone who was paying for all my expenses that I fucked up my one responsibility – making it to the airport on time? Fortunately I made it to the gate with 2 minutes to spare where I was meeting the local Kohler rep, who was clearly not impressed with my travel efficiency as he said, “Nice of you to join us,” as if what he was really saying was, “Cutting it a bit close there, asshole. Maybe next time you can pay for your own travel.” I briefly thought about just growling at him in return, “Grrrr…” but opted instead to just respond smugly with, “Thanks,” as if I was really saying, “Nice of you to schedule this flight at the ass crack of dark, dickhole. I hope the goddamn pilot got more sleep than I did. I’m docking you one more turd for being a douche at 6 in the morning.”

After a flight, a layover, and another flight, we arrived in Milwaukee where about eight other guys had already arrived. We were met by a driver who led us out of the airport where a Chrysler 300 stretch limo was waiting. Everyone was like, “Ah, awesome! We’re going to ride in a limo! Shweet!” But instead of getting in the limo we got into a shitty-ass 15-passenger van parked behind the limo like we were a goddamn high school tennis team or something. One less turd.

An hour later we arrived in Kohler where we sat through 4 hours of new product demonstrations, which would have earned them another 2 turd deductions if not for the one presenter who went into WAY more detail about how they designed all their products and actually used the words, “drop zone,” “landing area,” “deposit,” “Urinator 5000,” “urine pudding,” and “the flop factor,” to describe their various design considerations. So I gave them back 1 turd for keeping my interest.

The highlight was unquestionably the demonstration of their new 1.28 gallon per flush commercial toilet, which has been tested to flush up to 1000 grams of “medium.” In case you’re not current on your metric-to-English unit conversions, 1000 grams is equal to 2.2 pounds. And just in case you’re not current on toilet flush testing techniques, the “medium” of choice is miso paste which they form into little sausage-like packets that resemble, ironically, little hand-made turds. Honeslty they could have flushed anything down the toilet that was equivalent to 1000 grams but I guess if you’re looking for the real thing, might as well go all the way. They passed around a bucket full of the miso-turds that equaled 2.2 pounds and I think all of us were thinking the same thing, “Dear god, if I ever shit 2.2 pounds worth of shit, it would be the worst day of my life.” But thankfully the fine people at Kohler test for that condition because if there would be anything worse than shitting 2.2 pounds worth of shit, it would be doing it on a toilet that couldn’t flush it. So when they dumped the 2.2 pounds of miso turds into the toilet, pushed the flush valve, and the toilet actually evacuated the entire bowl, it was nothing short of spiritual moment for me. I gave them back another turd for that.

They really made up a lot of ground in the turd ratings with the accommodations and meal. They’re putting us up at a local lodge that was just recently renovated and I’m not one to get too worked up about something like a hotel but let me tell you, this place is fucking awesome. King bed, wet bar, mini fridge, 42” flat screen tv with speakers in the headboard and shower, and don’t even get me started on the bathroom. Sweet baby Jesus, I already have an unnatural obsession with quality plumbing fixtures but this is the top of the line from Kohler’s luxury brand. Just look at this place:

The shower alone is worth the trip. It has two multi-directional shower heads and 3 multi-directional body sprayers, each with enough flow and pressure to strip the hide off a caribou. This is the best shower on the market, stopping just short of washing your ass for you.

I briefly considered skipping dinner just to spend the evening in the shower but I’m glad I didn’t because the meal was amazing. We ate at some super remote hunting lodge where the food was to die for and the alcohol was never ending. Now, I certainly appreciate an open bar whenever I find one but I’m a man of class and taste, which is more than I can say for some of my other engineering counterparts on this trip. A couple of those douche wads were sucking down the booze like a freshmen in college who just snuck into the local bar for the first time. Before dinner even started you could just hear the decibel level in the room rising as these ass-monkeys were getting drunker and drunker and try to out talk each other about this plumbing job they did in Philly or that horrible building official in Richmond and that blah, blah, blah. By the time dessert came out the guys were just letting it all hang out. One dude was just laying into the Kohler reps telling them exactly what he thought about their products in excruciating detail, “Your producsh are shhhhit! One time, free years ago, I took a monser shhhit! Like the biggesh shhhhit yuv ever seen. And yur stoopid toilet wouldn’t flush shhhhit! Not a goddamn thing! I had to reach in thur with my hand! My hand I tell you!”

Okay, maybe that was a little exaggerated but not by much and I’m still docking them one turd for inviting a bunch of amateurs that can’t hold heir liquor. Still, despite the classless drunk assholes it all evened out because I gave them back 1 turd for dinner, it was that good.

So after day one the overall trip stands at 4 turds. Tomorrow is the defining moment though. If I can successfully use the term “upper deck” in conversation without pissing my pants, it will all be worth it.