About public bathrooms

I was reading someone’s blog the other day and she had one posting chastizing the person who had been in the ladies room stall before her, who apparently was a ‘squatter’ with bad aim. Now to you men, this might not mean anything, but to us women, it’s significant. We’ve all followed one – the person who won’t let their lily white skin touch the seat, but who has no problem leaving their dribbles for the next one in the stall. Grrrrrrrrr! May their 2-year-old never become toilet trained and be stricken with projectile diarrhea – in public.
I think one of the biggest water wasters in the world are the automatic flush toilets. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I usually wipe the seat, and put either the provided paper seat cover or toilet paper down before I sit (isn’t that just TMI, though?). Trouble is, with the automatic flushers, about the time I get the paper down, the toilet decides I’ve been standing there long enough and flushes. Which sucks the paper down the drain and sprays water on the seat, so I have to start all over again. Why women take longer than men in the rest room, to say nothing of the fact that we have to get all undone, while they just have to step up . . . oh, never mind.
Speaking of the paper seat covers, I’ve noticed that although more and more places have them, the one type of place that doesn’t is hospitals and other medical facilities. Do they know something we don’t, like these really don’t help prevent you from getting cooties off the seat, or are they just too cheap? Seems like a place where people are sick would be a place to have things to prevent the spread of. . . . but what do I know.
How about the automatic sinks? Either water is still running long after you have washed, rinsed, dried and left the room, or there’s barely enough water metered out to dampen your palms. Plus, usually I have to hit at least two of them to get one to give me any water.
And the automatic hand dryers, now aren’t they a treat. Although I have run into a few here and there that will blow the polish off your nails, most of them are ridiculously slow and ineffective. And you go into the ladies room – anywhere from say six to a dozen stalls, maybe four to six sinks – and one automatic hand dryer. Really? Obviously designed by a man.
Bathroom stall layout? How many have you been in that you have to fold yourself around the toilet paper holder to get to the seat? Or you sit down and have one side resting against the holders for the used unmentionables. Once again, set up by a man.
Speaking of bathrooms - - when I was driving, I said there were three things to never pass up: the chance to take a shower, the chance to brush your teeth and the chance to go to the bathroom. That third one has become more pertinent as I am getting older. But when I was in the truck, where your options of where to stop for anything are dictated by there being a large enough space to get something 8 ½’ by 13 ½’ by about 65’ that folds in the middle, it was something to always be considered and sometimes thought out ahead of time. And it seemed like any time I was sleeping and woke up needing a rest area, by the time I got up and into the cab, we had just gone past one. I still say it is the only time I get penis envy, when I have to tinkle in a place with no facilities.
Some of the facilities I met on the road were – let’s say interesting. For one thing, it continues to amaze me the number of women who do not understand the basics of indoor plumbing – you leave it in the bowl, push the handle and it goes away. Yeah, it’s that pushing the handle thing that some of them have trouble with, I guess. Next stall, please!
Bathrooms and rest areas I have met include one in the middle of Ohio that was pretty much an outhouse, with about three stalls, and those had walls that came about up to my shoulders. And the woman in the next stall was tall! Enough said. Then there was the one on I-10 in Arizona that was a little 2-holer that I always swore a rattlesnake would be waiting inside of some time for me – thankfully there never was.
Now that I have started camping, there are many campgrounds with marginal facilities at best. Many have the ‘vault’ toilets, that are ecologically sound, from what I understand, but that do test the ladylike sensibilities, of which thankfully I have few. These are a cross between indoor plumbing and an outhouse, a step below the one and step up from the other.
And I gotta say, places like Yellowstone and Yosemite, where there are ‘beware of bears’ signs all over, make you think about hiking to the little building in the middle of the night.
Then there’s port-a-potties. Everybody has a story about someone getting locked in one and it getting tipped over. At Camp Katrina I was the self-named ‘Port-A-Pottie Nazi’, trying to keep them clean and in useable condition for all. People were throwing trash, including soda cans (!) in them, until I put up a sign: “Please DO NOT throw trash into the tank. If they company gets pissed off and takes these away, we will have no place to piss in!”
My all-time favorite port-a-pottie story, though, is when I was delivering electrical material to a huge construction project in Dallas – I think it was a new sports stadium of some sort. I got there in the wee hours of the morning and of course had to wait hours to unload – this after being given wrong directions on how to get in to the place and almost getting stuck in some tiny streets in a questionable neighborhood – anyway, of course after a while I had to use one. There were two a little ways into the project from where I was parked, so I walked over, opened the door, and let me tell you, I don’t know how any of those men could possibly have driven a nail if that’s only how good they could aim. I’ve seen neater cow barns, with less – manure – spread around. I sure did squat that time, and held everything away from touching anything! And cleaned my shoes before I got back into the truck. Still waiting, I was watching what was going on in the site when one of those huge roof mounted cranes started swinging over towards my side of the project. It stopped, and the cables came down and someone attached them to – a pair of port-a-potties – and it lifted them up and swung them over to the other side of the construction. I was so amazed, I called the office because I had to tell someone – these two port-a-potties swinging from the cable, a couple of stories in the air. Hope they were empty.