Bathroom courtesy

I'm sorry for the foul nature of this post, but why are so many people so filthy and otherwise discourteous in public bathrooms?

Do they urinate on the seat at home?

Do they leave without flushing at home?

Do they throw toilet paper and towels on the floor at home?

Do they leave the water running at home?

And why do they think it's okay to have a conversation while people are on the can? Or, much worse, have a cell phone conversation while they are?

All of this disturbs me. Should I really have to put a note in the bathroom to flush the toilet before you leave?

Wow, I was just complaining about this to a fellow male member of the staff here. We share a bathroom with the rest of the floor, and it used to be absolutely disgusting. Forget the seat, every day I had to decide which of the three urinals had the least piss on the floor. That's just sick. Are these people trying to aim from four feet away or something??

Oddly, though, there was an incident that caused the building company to lock the bathrooms and require the businesses on the floor to have keys to get into them. Now the problem has been cut to less than 25% of what it was. I'm not sure why, though. Are people holding it until they get home? I actually suspect it's because delivery men, usually in a big rush, no longer use the bathrooms and wait until they get to a building where they can.

There's also a story relating to one of your pet peeves. For a while, we'd go into the bathroom and right at the door there would be a pile of used, crumpled up paper towels. This was odd and an bit annoying. Finally the same male staff member mentioned earlier saw a guy leave the bathroom and throw a towel on the floor. My co-worker stopped him and asked why he was doing that. The guy said it was because most people don't wash their hands when the leave the bathroom (true, though) and he didn't want to touch the handle to the door. The point was made that his practice was almost as rude, and the simple solution was the take the damn towel with him back to his office and throw it away there! Duh.

As you can see, Bitt, I'm also a man with pet peeves Hell, I started a huge thread about the idiosyncrasies of people in relation to butter storage

Funny thing is, Bitt... There have been multiple times in the recent past when I wanted to pose some of those very same questions... to my coworkers.

Something I read the other day said something like less than half of the peole using a public restroom wash their hands afterwards. I've noticed nearly everyone at work here does, at least when someone else is in the restroom at the same time. But do they wash their hands when they are the only one in the restroom???
And I agree with every issue Bitt raised, WTF is wrong with people?

This is apparently a good solution to lazy urinal users - give them som interest!

http://www.urinal.net/schiphol/

Gareth

that is brilliant.

And why do they think it's okay to have a conversation while people are on the can? Or, much worse, have a cell phone conversation while they are?

I don't think these two issues are really as severe as the others -- in fact, I'm not sure they're problems at all. I've worked at companies where overheard conversations in the khazi were the only way non-smokers found out anything about what the company was doing...

Peter

Do they urinate on the seat at home?

Do they leave without flushing at home?

Do they throw toilet paper and towels on the floor at home?

Do they leave the water running at home?

You think thats gross, I noticed while at the urinal the other day at my workplace that some freak had decided to wipe his nasal excrements on the wall. Not one, not two, but about 5 huge nose goblins, the most disturbing of which had a gigantic hair in the mix.

Damn, there goes lunch.

On a side note, that reminds me of one of my biggest pet peeves of all: gum under tables and desks. Anywhere, really. Under the arm rests in theaters, too. Why the hell can't those people throw their damn gum out? Thank goodness I'm out of school, so it's less frequent these days, but it's still an incredibly disgusting thing to do.

so it's less frequent these days

Unless you work with the nose goblin guy which I forgot to mention also spits his chewing gum in the urinal every day, so after about a week starts piling up and eventually clogs the urinal. Apparently the cleaning people are too disgusted to touch it (which I don't blame them). Some day I'll catch the freak in the act and expose him!

I can't stand to see people hold the side of a urinal as they're doing their thing. WHAT ARE THEY THINKING!

I think other then what I've already posted, the other thing that disturbs me at work is the amount of people I see leave the bathroom without washing their hands.

to my coworkers

That's what I'm talking about.

Or even better, Urinal computer games, which we talked about before.

I don't think these two issues are really as severe as the others

No, I suppose not. I recognize those as pet peeves, but I think most people would like as much privacy as possible, illusory or not, with one of the more personal acts of the day.

BTW, that's the first time I've ever heard ``khazi''.

Great post! I work in a two story building and often I walk into our bathroom and it just REEKS of . . . well . . . it smells bad. Anyway, I never stick around. If I'm remotly uncomfortable I'll just walk back out the door and go to the one downstairs (which never seems to smell bad).

I refuse to even go near the bathroom at work - it stinks. Badly. I'd rather go in my pants.

And why do all froms of "personal space etiquette" go out the window in a public restroom?

It's VERY simple: If there are three available urinals and I'm using the left-most one.... DON'T USE THE ONE NEXT TO ME!!!! Start at the right!

The same goes for the toilets. Leave neutral ground when doing your business.

Wasn't there some kind of test on the web to see if you picked the correct urinal at a bathroom?

It's VERY simple: If there are three available urinals and I'm using the left-most one.... DON'T USE THE ONE NEXT TO ME!!!! Start at the right!

The rule my friends and I always called the "1 5 3" rule. If there are 5 urinals, the proper order to fill them is 1, then 5, then 3. Then you start filling in 2 and 4 if absolutely necessary.

It gets a little complicated when there are 3 toilet stalls and the one on the far side is one of those handicapped jobs. They're uncomfortable for a lot of people to sit in because you're on a giant throne, plus it's always good to save that one in case an actual wheelchair person comes in. (This has never come into play in my experience, however.) So with this setup (like we have at work) a lot of people who would normally take crapper #3 when crapper #1 is in use decide to take crapper #2 instead. So #1 becomes the most sought-after location.

Wasn't there some kind of test on the web to see if you picked the correct urinal at a bathroom?

I was hoping for a "pick the pisser" Flash game, but this is all I found:

http://www.millan.net/funp/100/utest.html

If there are three available urinals and I'm using the left-most one.... DON'T USE THE ONE NEXT TO ME!!!! Start at the right!

We only have two urinals here at my office, I always go to the one on the right... As for the other business end, the handicapped stall for me, taller throne... Except when it's too stanky, then I go to the third floor. It's like heaven up there, flowery smelling, and I've never seen anyone up there... Well except for that hostage situation last month...

So, does anyone read while in the other office? What do you do with the book/magazine/newspaper afterwards?

This is an interesting subject.

One word: eBooks.

...and the one on the far side is one of those handicapped jobs.

At this point a judgement call is in order.... Are there any "insert PC term here-challenged" people working here?

No - It's fair game (and the one thats always occupied.)

Yes - see if there are any devices that can simulate a wheelchair (at least from an under-the-stall view.)

At my company we don't have any handy-capable people so the stall is usually occupied or where the reading material is left.

That's perfect!!!

Now alls I have to do is find a way to send this to the offenders without necessitating any involvement from HR.

There are a couple of weird urinal-use behaviors that I've noticed and wondered about over the years.
They seem, at least to me, to be fairly widespread and totally inexplicable.
Details to follow.

note: if any of you dear readers happen to have any of these odd habits I apologize in advance for making fun.
On the same note though maybe you could help explain.

One of them is the spitting thing.
Why when your at the urinal micturating away would you feel the need to spit into your own urine?
It could perhaps just be a need to spit, and I guess I find a urinal a more appropriate place, then say the sidewalk in front of where I'm walking (a whole other rant).
But this kind of spitting doesnt seem to be an out of necessity kind of spit. Like a removal of beard hair spit or bad flavor spit. Its an intentional long drawn out gross spit. And sometimes theres more than one.
Most of the time it seems pretty unnecessary.

The second thing is the multiple flushing thing.
I usually give the urinal a flush when I'm done (or when I get there depending on the state of the urinal), but dont really see the need to flush it 3, 4, or even 5 times while I'm peeing.
Maybe it stems from a concern that the urinal will fill up and spill over onto your shoes?
Maybe its just boredom, something to do while your waiting for you bladder to empty?
Or maybe its just to make room for all the spit....

...then I go to the third floor.

The third floor at my place is "Mahogany Row". And yes the restrooms up there also smell of pretty flowers (the logical assumption is that corporate officers are too "tight" to crap at work. )

The trade off is that if I'm seen up there I will be forced to fix every computer annoyance that any of the executives has ever endured.

I just had a men's room conundrum a few minutes ago with this thread fresh in my mind. I went in to drop a deuce, and saw that all 3 toilets were available, which is a rare occurrence. As I opened the door to crapper #1, I saw that there was a streak of doo-doo on the toilet seat. This is in the bathroom of a frickin' IT department within a Fortune 500 company! How does someone who can't control their own feces get hired here? Unbelievable! We have those tissue paper toilet seat thingies but I just can't get used to using those. I was so repulsed that I decided to hit the urinal instead and drop the kids off at the pool later.

Maybe my company needs a 3 day training class on how to take a shit properly.

My girlfriend was amazed when I attempted to explain the personal unspoken urinal rule. I find that on the most part it's a commonly understood rule. Still, I sometimes see those morons who, with an empty bathroom, will go straight to the middle of three urinals. Idiot!

And why can't more places install those simple dividers between the urinals?

Maybe it stems from a concern that the urinal will fill up and spill over onto your shoes?

Dunno about that, but I can tell you that Mrs. Walker at Hudson Elementary School did not like it when John Contreras and I did the overflowing urinal thing for fun... My ass hurt from the swats we got later... And that damn dude, that was the second time I got a swat hanging out with him, he was a bad influence. Of course playing hooky in first grade was kinda dumb...

My wife read the urinal rules somewhere, and verified them with me recently. I pointed out that my observations agreed, but in general I use a stall and thus solve that whole problem.

Anyone ever been to a place that has one of those urinal troughs? A couple of the bars at my school had those. I can think of no worse invention.

Anyone ever been to a place that has one of those urinal troughs?

Many times, but there is a pub near Paddington Station in London that has a wall, with bricks placed about a foot away from the wall and water running down the wall. It's the trough. It looks like it was an after thought to add a urinal. After many Director's Bitters we thought it was the coolest thing. Damned if I can't remember the name of the place. Shakespeare's comes to mind, but that is a bar in Austin, too so I don't know for sure... Shoulda got a picture.

You mean apart from those toilet cubicles you get in the US where the door is only about three foot tall. I hate those, I run screaming when I come across one and save myself til later...

...and even when you find a cubicle with a decent height door it is designed in such a way that there is a quarter inch gap on both sides of the door for the world to look at you though.

There are many of lousy public loos in the UK, but at least the doors hide you from the rest of the world.

In reply to:

---

there was a streak of doo-doo on the toilet seat. This is in the bathroom of a frickin' IT department

---

So that doesn't just happen where I work, then? I don't know whether I should be relieved or horrified that people in a whole other continent can't seem to manoeuvre their arse over the centre of a big porcelain bowl either! (please excuse my slightly colourful language)

The 'chewing gum in the urinal' thing happens with alarming regularity too. Not surprisingly, there is usually at least one urinal overflowing or one cubicle labelled 'Out of order' in any given week.

Some day I'll catch the freak in the act and expose him!

Considering this thread, you may want to reconsider re-phrasing that.

Me.

How about this one?

http://www.echois.com/downloadables/games/urinal.zip

place that has one of those urinal troughs?

My dad tells a story that when he was on gross anatomy somebody cut the ... ummm... well you know off a corpse and took it to a football game. The perp stood at the end of the trough with the hose running in and with much subterfuge let the ah, member, slip in. He says guys jumped back several feet as it slid by, making its way to the drain end. Dad wasn't actually there at the time, but apparently it made quite a hubbub at the school. The guy was never caught. And good thing, he would have certainly been expelled.

Dividers make it better but.... I find I still harbour a deep loathing for anyone who forgoes the "neutral urinal" and pulls up next to me.

These must be the people who setup right next to you on an empty beach!

The best crappers in the world are in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada. Imagine an outhouse with no walls, just a box, a hole and a seat. Room with a view & no outhouse spiders or stench. There's so few people in the park that you run practically zero risk of being walked in on. Rainy nights are a different story however...

-Zeke

Coolest one IMO in New Orleans is at the Plimsole club at the top of the World Trade Building here. The urinals are against the wall, marble everything, except behind you is glass floor to ceiling. This would normally bother me, except that the windows are mirrored on the outside, and you're the highest thing around by far. Add that to the fact that I takes many thousands of dollars a year just to buy the privelege of being a member of this club and suddenly the normal bathroom faux pas are nonexistent. Very very nice place to conduct your business. Keep in mind that I've only been there twice, and only on special invitation by a member. I come nowhere CLOSE to rounding up that type of change.

I think you missed one. We have an anonymous electronic suggestion box at work. This showed up a couple years ago:

Everytime I go into the mens bathroom and pull up to the urinals, I can see that the "Riddler" has been there again. I mean the millions of follicular question marks scattered and strewn about the lip of the urinal. I mean, do people yank out a handful of dna and sprinkle them about everytime before going? I went to college. I've seen gross stuff before. But, this is just disturbing as I can't picture anyone yanking out a handful. Maybe more frequent cleanings throughout the day? Ultimately, in a perfect world, you'd just ask people to not decorate, but this isn't a perfect world.

Since-hairly yours,

Anon

Now, as for the boogers on the walls, I've noticed that's an international thing. I've seen it in Canada, I've seen it in the US, I've seen it in India. What possesses people to do this?

Oh, and then why is it that people say "hey, what's up?" by way of greeting you in, entering, or leaving the bathroom? What sort of answer are they expecting? "Oh, you know, just doing a little number two. How 'bout you?" Or maybe "I just needed a bit of private time to dig a couple gems out from my nose -- my cubemate is kinda cute, so I couldn't do it in front of her. If you want to check them out, I left them on the wall in the third stall."

The 'gum deposition' habit is like smokers with their butts. There are some smokers who have so habitualised the movements involved in throwing a finished cigarette butt away that they don't actually realise they've done it. A friend of mine was giving a lecture to some campers at a festival about keeping things tidy and not throwing butts away. And, as she's talking, one of the smokers just flicks his but down on the ground and squashes it out with his toe. Despite my friend and several witnesses, he competely refused to believe that that was his butt and insisted it must have been left by someone else.

I think the root cause of all the problems in this thread is that there's a 'public space' mentality that says that mess gets cleaned up by someone else. We pay people to clean up after other people. I've even heard people justify leaving their junk lying around at McDonalds because "well, they pay someone to clean up, I'm giving them something to do". This 'public space' mentality ignores the fact that cleaning jobs are crappy, low-paid work that I personally think is hugely demeaning. And since there is no penalty - no social punishment (like being ostracised) or personal suffering (like living in your own filth) - these grots just keep on fouling up everything for everyone.

My personal advice to everyone here is two fold:

Firstly, find out what harm you create to other people's living and working environments. You might complain about the people leaving nose goblins on the wall, and not wash your hands... (And don't get me started about talking to people with smoker's breath.)

Secondly, clean up. I was annoyed when I nearly ran out of toilet paper at work once and there was no spare roll on the door. So from then on I made a point of putting a new spare roll in whenever I noticed there wasn't one. It might be a bit more work, but I never have to worry about being caught with no paper again. And I might have made some other people's lives much happier.

Think globally, act locally...

Paul

There is a local bar here that has those plastic urinal cake holders. What's so special about that? There is a joke written on them and when you do your business the warmthness of the urine reveals the punchline to the joke. And when your all done and flush the urinal the coldness of the water covers up the answer so that the next person may enjoy the joke as well. I thought it was a damn brilliant idea.

I have yet to find a bath in a "public bathroom". Where is it hidden?

There is an exhibit currently on at the Tate Britain art gallery. It is out in the street out front of the gallery and from the outside it looks like a box with mirrors making up all four walls plus the roof.

Inside there is a fully plumbed in toilet. However, the mirrors are one-way glass so from inside you can see out, but from the outside you can't see in.

Apparently it's quite liberating, if not a little unnerving to sit there and evacuate while being able to see the whole world go by.

And in a bar in NY the loo doors appear to be plain glass until you lock them, at which point they mist up. The doors are masive lcd panels that cost $20k each - but they are pretty impressive.

There is an exhibit currently on at the Tate Britain art gallery. It is out in the street out front of the gallery and from the outside it looks like a box with mirrors making up all four walls plus the roof.

Inside there is a fully plumbed in toilet. However, the mirrors are one-way glass so from inside you can see out, but from the outside you can't see in.

Apparently it's quite liberating, if not a little unnerving to sit there and evacuate while being able to see the whole world go by.

I would be pretty scared of using that - I would worry that it's some kind of hidden camera gag where as soon as you sit down and start doing your thing, somebody presses a button and it turns to clear glass like the LCD panels you mention.

When I was young we used to go to agricultural shows and the toilets there were pretty basic - pretty much a large pit and a plank of wood with a hole and plywood walls. Then again, that was probably luxury to most of the visitors.

Gareth

the toilets there were pretty basic

One word: Glastonbury.

ughh, yeah I totally didn't look at the way that was worded...

Could be worse...

A coworker at my old job worked with somebody that [censored] his own pants and left a big stain on his chair. He wheeled the chair to his boss to show him what kind of slob the guy was. The boss says:

"We need guys like him. He's so dedicated to work that he can't take the time to walk to the bathroom."

there is a pub near Paddington Station in London that has a wall, with bricks placed about a foot away from the wall and water running down the wall...

The University of Chapel Hill football stadium has a similar system, except "urination room" has a large, cube-shaped design and water flows down marble walls into a trough at the base. All one needs to do is stand around and piss on the wall.

University of Chapel Hill

One would assume you mean the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

But over here in Raleigh, some of NCSU's older buildings have these very cool urinals that have foot pedals for flushing. Why did that not stick? As filthy as we've established people are, you'd think touching stuff with your hands would best be avoided, and there was technology to do that. Why get rid of it?

That's a cool freakin' avatar, man.

We had a fraternity at Dartmouth like that (AD), except there was no water running in the trough. It was pretty damn foul, to say the least.

-Zeke

One would assume you mean the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

That is what I meant. Good call.

That's a cool freakin' avatar, man.

Thanks.

OMG...

I had to reply to this as the sign they came up with at work was great.
One guy here had such bad "bathroom etiquette" (aim) that by Friday you had to use the can because you couldn't get near the urinal.
So one Monday I stroll in and there it is.

Here at (company name) we aim to please...

SO you aim too PLEASE!

I almost wet myself laughing when I saw it.

We had a fraternity at Dartmouth like that (AD)

Was that not the very fraternity "Animal House" was modeled after?

Wonder if Wesley Clark stopped by to take a leak there on his way to the Sig Ep house (note the apropos sweatshirt.)

Indeed, AD was Chris Miller's house. It's a bit of a different house these days than the one portrayed in the movie. Mostly it's well off rugby players and Ambercrombie zombies. At least is was in '89-'93. These things change. They were in a bit of a bind then over some ill-advised sink-night audio tapes (when pledges 'sink' their bids' - think 'Thank you sir, may I have another!'/KevinBacon) with some less than PC discussion of women.

SigEp's (or at least was) mostly track guys & good students.

-Zeke

It's a bit of a different house these days than the one portrayed in the movie.

That's a shame.. You'd think the fraternity that pretty much defines fraternities would have tried a little harder to hold onto its identity over the years. Or maybe that transformation happened before the screenplay was written? Still, if I were there I would most assuredly do my best to bring down the grades, steal lots of stuff, and get really wasted every night. Then again I did that for my house, so it wouldn't be much of a stretch.

I'd stay away from the underage girls, though.

Yeah at the time my house (Bones Gate) pretty well typified the house portrayed in the film. We consistently had the lowest GPA on campus (occasionally one of the Coed houses would surpass our sloth and get a lower average). At one point I was the only varsity athlete in the house, and I was on the sailing team. It was a lot of fun.

-Zeke

Damned brilliant is an understatement.

Before I proclaim this the greatest innovation of this century (sure it's still early, but I've already seen a critic proclaim a movie the "Best of '04"), I have to ask: are the chemicals released into the public water system from urinal cakes poisonous to baby harp seals? Or other equally cute babies?

I have to take a dump and all this talk of exotic bathrooms has me really looking forward to it.

From Quakecon 2002:



It was getting pretty nasty. You would imagine people would be a bit more clean in a bathroom they will probably use several times over the course of the event.

Not washing your hands after going in a urinal is bad enough, but it is even worse when you come from one of the stalls and don't wash your hands....Also, what is with the doors in the stalls that have about an inch worth of space between the door and the part that it is hinged too? I don't want anyone to be able to watch me sittin' on the crapper....

Also, what is with people in bars putting their bottle of beer on top of the urinal? That is nasty........

Also, what is with people in bars putting their bottle of beer on top of the urinal? That is nasty........

Well, it's either that or waking up in an ice-filled bath, and finding a note attached to the phone next to you...

Huh?

Here.

you wake up in an ice cold bath wondering where you are. you look around and notice a cell phone on the toilet basin. you attempt to get up and are hampered by a sudden, strong pain in your abdominal area. you run your hands down your stomach, but they are too numb to feel much. you glance down and attempt to scream as you notice, through the gaping hole, that you are missing your left kidney.

I thought it had morphed and was going to read "you attempt to scream but find you are also missing your vocal chords" !!!

The Snopes page has some very interesting theories as to the origin of the legend.