Cindy Lange Kubick: Coffee shop employees find 'Bathroom Barbies'

Jamie Yost won't do it.

"I won't go in the bathroom," the barista declared in between mixing double lattes and cappuccinos to-go at The Mill in the Haymarket Friday morning.

"You go to clean and there's a Barbie doll staring up at you. It's creepy."

Jamie has never actually found a Barbie in the bathroom at work. But many of her fellow baristas have.

The dolls started to show up a couple of months ago — one at a time, perched somewhere in the women's restroom. On the shelf by the paper towels. Posed on the back of the toilet.

Employees would find them in the morning when they went in to scrub the toilet or restock the paper products.

The first one appeared at The Mill in College View.

Jamie points to that Barbie, sitting on a shelf next to the Ethiopian coffee beans with the other Barbies, looking like a gang of plastic fashion models ready for the runway.

That first Bathroom Barbie is wearing a slinky faux leopard print dress and a cat's-eye costume ball mask.

There's an Asian Barbie in a short red kimono. She's missing one red high heel, like maybe she stayed out too late and drank too much and then missed her cab and had to run home.

There's a pretty pink ballerina Barbie. A ‘60s Barbie with tall yellow boots. A Marilyn Monroe Barbie in fur and chiffon.

"See," says Jamie. "They're scary. They're creepy."

Back in College View, barista Melissa Chilcote agrees.

"Some people thought it was cool, I guess. I think the general consensus was it was kind of weird."

After all, who would leave a perfectly good Barbie in a coffee house bathroom?

And, why?

"Somebody obviously wants to get rid of some stuff, but as far as why I'm not sure," said coffee maker Calen Olivetti.

It could be some sort of attention-getting behavior, he said.

"Or else they're really nice."

Most of the Barbies have little plastic stands. People who know about Barbies say that means they're special.

They don't look played with, either.

Melissa remembers a flier that someone posted in the College View store advertising collectable Barbies for sale this spring.

She figures whoever put up the flier left the Barbies.

"I just assumed she couldn't sell them and so she was leaving them here to get rid of them."

But why The Mill?

Why not leave Barbie someplace Barbie might be more beloved?

Like an orphanage or a sorority house?

They haven't found a new bathroom Barbie for awhile, said Alisa Heinzman.

And she's a little bummed. The barista was pretty indifferent to Barbie growing up, but when Barbie started showing up at work, she liked it.

It was fun.

"We'd play with them and set them up as props next to the tip jar."

There's still a Barbie by the tip jar downtown. Somebody took her teal shawl, the one that matched her teal evening gown, and tied it around her head guerrilla style.

They streaked her hair blue and gave her a tiny plastic sub-machine gun. She's Patty Hearst Barbie now.

They've kept a few Barbies at the College View coffee house. And one of The Mill's owners plans to build a display case for the Haymarket Barbies.

A few centuries back in English coffeehouses it was a tradition to have small displays, Dale Nordyke says. A nun's stocking. So and so's hat. A piece of the true cross.

"So now we have Barbies. It would have been nice if we were smart enough to think it up as a gimmick."

Alas, they weren't. They couldn't even catch their bathroom Barbie patron.

Although for a while some baristas took to taking frequent bathroom breaks around closing time, to see if they could shake her out.

Someone even confronted a woman they suspected, says Alisa.

"She blushed and didn't respond."

Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.