My girlfriend at work, the one who is not a bitch (I should give her a real fake name) asked me if I was going to protest the Proposition 8 California passing.

She is somewhat fascinated by my bi-ness.

“No way, no how!”

“Why not?” she asks.

“I’m a bi woman. I am at the bottom of the pile in the gay world. If I get together in a long-term relationship with a lesbian, then I am a lesbian. That whole ”man thing” was just a “phase” that I got over.  If I get together in a long-term relationship with a man, than I am a straight woman who was “just experimenting” before going back to the dick.”

“What? People don’t really think that, do they?”

“Hell yes. Worse has been said. To my face. Most of the single lesbians I run into won’t even consider dating me and the one that would, I’m not attracted to her.”

Martha looks sad (oh, that’s a good name for her. She looks like a Martha). “That sounds awful! Do you get lonely?”

And just to prove I’m a silly girl, I burst into tears. At fucking work.

“Oh I am sorry!” She hugs me and I cry a little more, than get it back together before a customer sees me. Crying has really unnerved her, as if I was the last person in the world she expected to see cry.

“Not your fault. I’m sorry, I didn’t know I let it get to me.”

“Sit, let me re-do your makeup. Your mascara ran.”

I giggle and look around. We work at different counters. “OK.”

She quickly does me up. She can’t resist changing my lipstick shade.  I go from S.O.S. PINK to WHORE RED. Which doesn’t look too bad.

“Let’s go to Cinabon for lunch!” Martha says.

“I thought you said you would never go there again.” Martha has to really watch what she eats.

“Screw that. Let’s get high off of sugar and bitch about bitchy girls!”

I love Martha. She’s like the nicest person ever.

And if anybody is ever mean to her, I am, without a doubt, going to KICK THEM IN THE FACE!

It’s easy to think up a long list of products you wouldn’t market in a rest room. (Turn it into a parlor game and you could have fun playing it with your snarky friends, even.)

But you’d be scratching your, uh, head a long time before coming up with a product that’s less stall-likely than Cinnabon, a brand so successfully built around the scent of its product. In other words,

Cinnabon’s “gift of aroma and taste,” as the placard I found in the men’s rest room Friday at this Delaware I-95 rest stop put it.

You can see how this could happen–I guess.The ad, after all, was likely a free item for the manager at Cinnabon, a concessionaire to the state.

But contextual missteps like this are significant. Even when you get the air rights in the men’s room at no charge, your brand is not getting off Scott® free.

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