If you’ve ever visited New York City, you’ll know that most of the buildings across the five boroughs are old, old, and old. What that tends to mean is…not only are the buildings old, but their entire makeup from underground and up, including the sewage systems, the pipes, the walls, are ancient. And what that tends to translate into when it comes to you? It means that every time you do your business and flush the toilet… it may not always go all the way down, or as quickly as you’d like.

Oftentimes, when you use public restrooms in restaurants or whatever common spaces in New York, it’s common to see signs that say something like, “Please hold the flusher down three seconds,” or “Do NOT put anything into the toilet other than toilet paper!” The plumbing is weak. You definitely do NOT want your pee or crap coming up. No one wants to see that, not even you. So it’s weird when you know you live in a relatively new building and you find out that the handymen recommend that you NOT use two-ply, Charmin brand toilet paper. Huh?

We’ve been living in our current building for the last 3.5 years, and never even once have we ever had any toilet problem… until today. Chris noticed that the toilet was flushing slower than usual, and so we called the handyman to come up. He came up and looked at the toilet paper on our toilet paper handle. “Is that Charmin?” he asked us. We responded that it was, and he said he’d strongly recommend we not use it anymore because the pipes here can’t handle it.

This building just opened in 2016 and isn’t even five years old. How can a NEW building have pipes that cannot handle two-ply toilet paper from a mainstream toilet paper brand???? If new buildings in New York cannot handle two-ply toilet paper, then the rest of the city (if not the world) is screwed.