Public Bathrooms, #2 and Locking the Door

Concerned reader G.W. writes the following:

OK – I have read through your site and I have run into a question on bathroom etiquette I haven’t yet seen addressed anywhere.

Scenario:
At work
The men’s bathroom has one stall and one urinal.
The men’s bathroom door locks.

Here is my thinking…

Acceptable multiple person use: (Reason to leave the door unlocked)
I am going in to do #1 and am the only occupant, I use the urinal, leaving the stall open for use.
I am going in to do #1 and the urinal is occupied, I use the stall and try and take long enough for urinal user to wash up and leave before heading to the single sink.
I am going in to wash hands only.

Situations for single use only: (reasons to lock door or leave and come back later)
I am going in to do #2 and am the only occupant, I use the stall but have locked the bathroom door so that no one else can enter the bathroom.
I am going in to do #2 and the urinal is occupied, I go to the stall and try and take long enough for “setup” that urinal user has time to wash up and leave before I get down to business. (someone with good etiquette would lock the bathroom door behind them so no one else is subjected to nasal collateral damage upon entering.)
I am going in to do #2 and the stall is occupied. The user is not practicing good etiquette. I lock the door for them and come back later or head to the other bathroom in the adjacent building.

So the reason I am writing is that I am taking flack for locking the door in the above situations. Am I out of line?

I don’t think I am and here is why…
When I lock the door I know what I am going to be doing in there. I don’t want company and believe me, they don’t want to be that company. Nothing about it is a bonding experience nor something I care to share. The same goes for when I walk in and someone is in the locked stall but the bathroom door is unlocked. I am instantly angry! Why? Why did you leave the bathroom door unlocked and assault me with your stench? Why couldn’t you have just stopped me outside the door with the simple press of a door handle button lock? Did you know what you were going to do when you went in there?

I won’t be offended that the door is locked. I am happy you spared me the disgust and revolt of having to have smelt what you have dealt!

Thank you very much!

(My hat is off to you, this stuff is complicated!) Keep up the good work

I’ve got to say, this is one of the most interesting and most difficult questions I have ever received. First of all though, I want to address this issue of the locking door. I’m surprised it’s possible to lock the door for another person. Wouldn’t this result in the potential situation where you lock the door, leave, there’s nobody in there and thus the bathroom is locked up with no way to enter it? Is this a pseudo-lock like you often find in homes which can be easily opened with a paperclip? It just seems like a very unusual setup for a public bathroom.

But let’s forget about that, because it really isn’t crucial to the question. We know the bathroom has a lock, and let’s assume that it is used perfectly and the door is never locked with nobody inside. The real question is, should somebody lock the door when they are doing a #2? Well to answer that we have to get to the root of what etiquette is all about.

Etiquette is about being concerned with other people.

In the context of a public bathroom, this generally means trying to minimize the negative impact your actions are having on other people, because let’s face it – there aren’t a lot of positive ways you can affect somebody by going pee or poo (unless the #2 mitigates a gassy afternoon at the office, but that’s another story for another time).

So let’s consider this action of door locking from the perspective not of the person doing the #2, but of the other people.

Positives:

1. Nobody has to listen to the sound of you doing a #2, which can be pretty gross
2. The impact of the stench is abated

Negatives:

1. People have to wait to use urinal and/or sink

But which of the above is most important? Do the positives outweigh the negatives? Clearly for G.W. they do. He’s a proponent of locking the door because he feels people are better off waiting outside for him to finish his business. The thing is, by his own admission G.W. is “taking flack for locking the door”, which implies the other people aren’t impressed.

And I think that’s really the bottom line. Despite his best intentions, G.W. is taking flack for his actions, and so the people have spoken. People would rather be assaulted by the stench than have to wait a couple minutes to go pee.

The flip side of course is that G.W. himself would rather wait. So the ideal circumstance is that he leaves the door unlocked, but that other people lock the door if they think he’s going to need to go pee, but it’s impossible to predict when that will happen.

And speaking of the stench, it’s hard to know how much it helps to not be present during the actual event. Most public bathrooms don’t exactly have great ventilation, so I’m not convinced that it’s any less stinky to go pee right after somebody finishes going #2 than it is while they are actually going #2.