The indigenous living behaviors of public bathroom dwellers

There are many places that I would never volunteer as my destination, any countries with political instability, any countries without consistent supply hot water on demand, and any countries without reliable internet connections. On the other hand, there are places that are unavoidable, despite the harsh conditions. For example, the public bathroom.

The perils of the public bathroom is often absent in the recess of our minds, which I suspect is a form of primitive self preservation technique. Denial is obviously the most effective tool for curbing one’s natural instinct to avoid dangerous situations. Despite my brain’s better effort to mask the dangers, thus disallowing any confrontations of the public bathroom, I will put my own life on risk to address this series of life-threatening issues today.

Bathroom Design – The Division

I don’t know who was the brilliant engineer that came up with “the division” between bathroom stalls. The proponent of the division would say, “What, would you rather have no wall at all?” My issue with the division isn’t the fact that it exists, but the fact that it doesn’t exist enough.

Let’s say, if you were building a house, would you ever consider putting in walls with six-inches hollowed on the bottom, or having two-inch space between the walls? Other than a certain type of “converted-loft-into-living space” lifestyle, where the open space is meant to focus and project any strange noise you make into a sonic boom that can be released by cracking your windows just an eighth of an inch (thus allowing all of your neighbors to know exactly what you were doing last Saturday night), it’s hard to imagine anyone would build houses with floating walls on purpose.

So why, in the name of whatever holy entity one might be subscribed to at the moment, would anyone think floating wall in the most holy sanctuary of men is enough? How much longer will I have to watch as shoes pacing by the front of my stall door and pray silently to myself, “Please don’t look, please don’t look please don’t look..” There is no dignity with floating walls, let’s just all pass a bill that makes it mandatory for every public bathroom to have walls that touches the ground, and doors that closes without leaving peeping cracks, okay?

Bathroom Design Part II – The Urinal

Make no doubt, men take pride in their urinals. It’s one of the few (very, very, very few) places where men can claim almost absolute superiority over women. “See, I can go pee in less than the time it takes you to drop your pants and sit down!” However, the urinal itself is filled with an impossible flaw:

Splash.

Back.

I’ve seen all types of urinals throughout my years. Small ones that required precise aiming, gigantic urinals that one can sit inside if so choosed, ones that stretches from top of the ceiling to the floor, and elongated urinals that makes you wonder, “Where do I stand?!” Regardless the size or shape of the urinals, there is one common inevitability. No matter where you “go”, it will splash, you will eventually get some on you in some very visible and embarassing place. You can aim high, you can aim low, you can aim at the little hole on the very bottom or the “cakes” that never seem to really absorb anything (a little tip, the cake usually causes the most amount of unpredictable splashback). It does NOT matter.

This is what leads me to believe, that the designers behind urinals are really all women. It’s a dark, hidden conspiracy. It was created, supposedly, to prove the superiority and the efficiency of the male gender by demonstrating just how fast we can zip in and out of the bathroom, impatiently waiting in front of the women’s bathroom while tapping our toes. In reality, we’ll be staring blankly at the bathroom mirror wondering to ourselves, “How did that get there?” Meanwhile mortified at the slight chance that our dates might even peek (and they will peek!) at the general region.

Gentlemen! Speed & efficiency is NOT the most important issue at hand here. Slow down, aim carefully, and use a toilet if you have to (preferrably one with full length wall enclosures)!!!

How the Fuck Did That Get There?!

Despite my previous recommendation to use the toilet at all cost. There is one exception to the rule: If you can’t aim… don’t use the toilet!!

Even with all its flaws, the urinal provides a much larger (usually) surface area and shorter (usually) distance of travel will make up for one’s lack of aim. Splashback is the price that one has to pay, but you don’t expect for human invention to make up for all of your personal problems, do you?

Men, by default, tend to overestimate their own ability to control anything around them, may it be environmental, circumstantial, or limbs & organs that are actually attached to their body (which by definition, they *should* have control over and yet remain hopelessly without). Men who overestimate their ability to aim, commits the worst of sins that can be associated with the bathroom.

We’ve all had this experience, when you walk into the bathroom toilet stall and think to yourself, “How the FUCK did that even get there?~!!” At times you would think that the person that was using this particular toilet before you, might have their internal organs arrangement inverted from the normal physical anatomy that we’ve studied in school. There are several variations of this reaction:

How the fuck did that get…

• on the toilet seat
• on the floor
• on the door
• in the next stall
• on/in all of the above

combined with…

• a manly growl
• a girlish scream
• utter look of disgust
• utter blank stare of shock

Worst of all, men being men, we are not programmed to innately understand the operation of cleaning apparatus of any kind. Even at the expense of exposing oneself as “the guy who just did that” by simply walking away from the stall with a person waiting directly outside the door, men would still choose to leave things as is, and assume the evidence will magically disappear in between sessions.

Is This Even Made From Paper?

Many people make fun of fast food chains for purchasing meat of such low quality, that they would never actually make it onto supermarket shelves. The same can be said of toilet paper for use in public bathrooms. I have no idea how to source and acquire these toilet papers, but it is not rare for one to consider that large print newspaper might be a better choice.

The types of public bathroom toilet rolls I’ve experienced:

• Thin to the point that any bit of moisture will rip through multiple layers. This will probably remind you of the mistake that you made when you purchased that condom from that gas station vending machine one time.
• Despite being thin enough to melt in the air humidity of say, Florida, the toilet paper still manages to be sharp enough to virtually erase your finger prints.
• Multiple layers that never lines up correctly, which isn’t a big issue, but tends to make me very confused and attempt to “fix” it. Somehow tacking on another 20 minutes to the time I spent in the bathroom when it’s all said and done.
• Perforations that never seem to tear away correctly. One tug, you get half a tear and another 3 sheets, and this will continue as long as you insist that the perforations are there to help you.

Worst of all, is when they use the one ultimate toilet roll that seems to combine all the attributes of above: Thin, rough, multiple layers that seems to be falling apart at rapid pace, and most of all… no perforations at all. I don’t know how much money is saved each year by the mere absence of perforations on toilet rolls, but they make these long, continuous rolls that leaves the tearing and separation of individual sheets to your own device.

How am I supposed to know how many square sheets of toilet roll I need, if there are NO square sheets at all? One simply cannot expect the average, normal people to have the mental acuity to be able to determine an arbitrary value of toilet paper length needed! Can’t they at least print some sort of measurement units on the toilet paper itself (although I doubt that will be cheaper than if they just added perforation).

Even more frightening still, is such toilet rolls are always without a doubt, combined with a toilet roll dispenser equipped with a safe, plastic cutting blade. PLASTIC! It seems to take strength and reflex of Olympic proportion to make sure you get just the right amount (relatively speaking) of toilet paper separated with these dull, plastic blades.

I undersand the plastic blades were invented to protect one from cutting themselves, and thus avoiding potentially embarassing lawsuit. However, I think that anyone who files a lawsuit because they cut themselves while dispensing toilet paper, should probably be quarantined away from the rest of the gene pool.

What Is That Smell?

I’m not talking about “the smell”, we all know what that smell is. I’m talking about the urinal cakes, the air fresheners (both the spray and plugin kind), the blue liquid stuff that comes out when you flush, and whatever fashionable contraception there is to keep the bathroom sanitized and “fresh”.

For some odd reason, none of these devices ever seem to work as advertised. It’s almost as if the aim of such devices is to create a mixture of smell with human excrements that can only smell worse by a factor of ten or more.

Personally, I think all these devices were created to speed up the process and flow of people in and out of public bathrooms. If anyone made a device that can actually completely neutralize the bathroom smell, it would only cause people to stay even longer in the holy sanctuary that is the bathroom. Think about the typical amount of time spent on the toilet reading while you’re at home, versus the time you spent on the public toilet. The time-spent-ratio favors home bathrooms by an enormous amount.

This is no accident my friend, very much like the headache-inducing music or nausea-incuding smell at popular clothing retail outlets, these are all subtle hints that pushes you to get in, get it done, and get out instead of lingering around.

In Conclusion…

The situation is dire, and I’m not sure what I said here will be enough, or in time to save anyone from the perils of public bathrooms. I can only hope that someone out there will read this message, and think twice before they enter a public bathroom. Even if you HAVE to go, please go as safely, as possible.