Category — Reader Mail

Here at the ICBE we get a lot of email from people who seem to have missed the concept of the site entirely and want us to enter into a wholesaler agreement to sell bathroom fixtures. So it’s a real treat to get an email about a product that’s actually relevant to bathroom etiquette.

As you probably know, the ICBE’s official position is that the toilet seat should be left down. The one thing about this is that, especially in mixed male/female environments, this involves a lot of raising/lowering the toilet seat.

Enter the Johnie-Lift, a small handle that attaches to the seat to minimize actual contact with the (hopefully not too) germ-laden surface. Paul writes the following:

The discussion on whether to leave the toilet seat or down wages on, however I believe in leaving it down. My wife has me well trained and it makes sense to me anyway.

Back in 1963, my In-Laws made a small handle for the toilet and won approval from Sears & Roebuck to carry it, but they did not have the resources to make the injection mold.

Now, after some 46 years, my wife resurected the product, including upgrading the look to be decorative in order to blend in with today’s bathrooms. We used the same name that my In-Laws came up with way back.

Our product is the Johnie-Lift – a decorative toilet seat handle that installs instantly and provides a more sanitary way to raise and lower the seat, eliminating any direct contact. While this a small step in the overall germ prevention program, combined with other simple ideas will make a big difference. It may also reduce the incidence of arguments.

We are a small, family-owned company located in Thousand Oaks, California and we need help in getting our message out. Please let me know if you could help us.

Well, I’m not really sure about the marketing power of the ICBE, but we’re happy to try. Head on over to the Johnie-Lift site to check them out, and order a few. At $2.95 a pop they are nothing if not reasonably priced.

We talk about seat position a lot here at the ICBE. As we say on our dedicated page on the matter, proper etiquette dictates that the seat be left down, with a couple exceptions. Here’s an important passage from that page that bears repeating:

…this isn’t about logic, or statistics, or minimizing global effort or anything other than etiquette and doing what’s right.

So when reader Michael D. emailed me a link to a statistical analysis of toilet seat positions and efficiency, I wasn’t that impressed. From the paper, by Jay Pil Choi:

I find that the “down rule” is inefficient unless there is a large degree of asymmetry in the inconvenience costs of shifting the position of the toilet seat across genders. I show that the “selfish” or the “status quo” rule that leaves the toilet seat in the position used dominates the down rule in a wide range of parameter spaces including the case where the inconvenience costs are the same.

Let me repeat: This isn’t about efficiency. This is about etiquette!

We here at the ICBE love dual-flush toilets. First brought to our attention by the land down under, the general concept is as follows. Your toilet has two buttons, one for a regular flush, and one for a light flush that uses less water. Think of it as one button for pee and another for poo if you will. It makes a lot of sense, since the standard flush is major overkill for a bit of pee, and saves a ton of water over time.

Sure you could always let the yellow mellow, but that doesn’t go over well with everyone. I’ve always wondered why dual-flush toilets weren’t mainstream in North America, but now I have a report that they are – at least in Canada. Esteemed reader Holly writes the following:

We here in Canada have quite a few of the two-button devices detailed in the Australian section.

Really? I’ve spent 21 years of my life in Canada, and have travelled there numerous times since relocating to the USA, and have never once seem a dual-flush toilet. Unfortunately my reply to Holly was ignored so I was unable to get any more specific information.

Any Canadian readers out there with stories of dual-flush toilets, proof or maybe pictures?

I received a rather disturbing email from Ash recently:

I’d like to request an update to http://www.icbe.org/workplace-bathroom-etiquette/.

At my place of work we constantly have problems with people peeing on the toilet seat, which can make doing number #2 an unnecessarily unpleasant experience. Could you please add a section on putting the seat up if you have to pee standing up in the bowl ? I’m considering printing off the points on this page and putting them up, so if you could update the page it would be awesome!

It’s disturbing because wiping your pee off the seat (or just plain not peeing on the seat in the first place) seems like such a fundamental rule of bathroom etiquette and general good behavior that people wouldn’t need to be reminded of it. It just goes to show that there is no depth to which people will not sink when it comes to bad bathroom etiquette. I have updated the page, but let me say it here as well:

Being out of the house does not give you license to be a slob. Just because you are at work, or in a random public restroom, it is not okay to pee on the seat, or on the floor, or not flush, or any other gross thing you might consider doing.

VooDoo Child writes the following:

“There have been studies done which show that the most efficient thing to do is simply to leave the seat in whatever position it was when you finished up.” (from Bathroom Etiquette at Home)

The above statement is actually true proper etiquette for today’s time. It is not the man’s responsibility to make sure the seat is down for a woman… any more than it is the responsibility of a woman to put the seat back up when she finishes. It is 2009 and nobody gets a free pass just because of gender.

Hmmm. Regardless of the year (this email was received while it was still 2009), I hardly consider leaving the seat down a free pass for women. Women already have a hard enough time going to the bathroom what with the whole “can’t pee standing up without some effort or third party appliances” thing, and if leaving the seat down makes it easier for them, while I think that’s the right thing to do. Etiquette is all about being aware of others.

But you are correct – it’s not the man’s responsibility to put the seat down, it’s simply good etiquette to put the seat down. People always confuse etiquette, laws, rules and responsibility.

VooDoo Child continues:

SIDE NOTE: The same holds true for birth control. It is not the man’s responsibility – because he cannot get pregnant. (Of course, if he fails to protect himself, he could end up with 18 years of child support payments, not to mention an STD – but I digress). A woman should hold complete responsibility for birth control. Please consider the following: If it happened that a man’s testicles grew to the size of watermelons, plus he experienced several months of daily nausea, and then was saddled with a lifelong commitment to another human being (or had to make the difficult decision to kill it) – just because he didn’t consider birth control before having sex, I ASSURE you that 99.9 percent of men would take every precaution to keep that from happening, and would NEVER expect a woman to protect him from that.

Whoa. Sex and pregnancy have NOTHING to do with etiquette. Both women and men need to do whatever they can to avoid unwanted pregnancies and STDs. It’s ridiculous to compare toilet seat position and sex/pregnancy.

Still more from VooDoo Child:

Now, I’m certain you will not correct your page, because that etiquette rule was simply your opinion as a woman. However, if there were a non-gendered judging party who was completely impartial and unbiased…. I feel certain they would agree with me whole-heartedly.

As for your site in general though, I like it. Keep up the good work.

Curious – this is the first time I’ve been mistaken for being a woman. I assure you I am a man, and my thoughts on toilet seat etiquette are anything but selfish. Oh, and thanks!

There are loos, and then there are ultimate loos. Gisborne sends us the following shot of a toilet near Heather Lake, in Sequoia National Park. This my readers, is an ultimate loo!

And in case you are wondering, the sign is warning users not to throw any trash in the toilet.

Alert reader Neil sent us a lovely picture of this fantastic toilet sign spotted near Korsor in Denmark:

While I suppose it’s possible that in fact there are two signs pointing to two different things, I reject this hypothesis. The only reasonable explanation is that the Danes, upon going to the toilet, routinely end up in the water up to their shoulders.

Gross!

In the past, we’ve discussed the phenomenon whereby people seem to believe that their own farts smell good. This time, a reader has gone one step further, asserting that his actual poops smell not only good, but like specific food items!

Braden writes the following:

Some times, when I poop, it smells like a very inviting plate of over-easy eggs and hash browns.

Unfortunately, it seems like things aren’t always quite so lovely. The email continues…

Other times it smells like cow manure. I find this quite amusing.

From tasty breakfast items to cow dung. You win some and you lose some Braden!

Alaric writes the following:

As like every morning I go into the bathroom to have my morning glory. This restroom is pretty big. It is at a government building and has 15 stalls (I counted them because of this). I was the only person in the room at the time so I selected a stall that was not in the middle and not at the end. I sat down and started my business when I hear the door open. Did not really care but this guy selects the stall right next to mine… Mind you that there are 14 EMPTY stalls. Then he proceeds to drop the biggest bomb known to man, this shit was so loud and forceful that his gas had echoes and it sounded like some was dumping out there sink in the toilet… Stunk to high hell.. This happened right next to me… Dude could have picked any damn toilet in the restroom but picks the one next to mine.

This has to be a breach of bathroom etiquette, like the one urinal rule. If there is 3 urinals and there is one guy on the end you take the one on the other end.

Good point. To a first approximation, stall usage mirrors urinal usage. You should never choose a stall adjacent to an occupied stall when another option is available. Now that said, there are a couple of notable exceptions:

1. When all the other stalls are occupied, it is perfectly fine, under normal circumstances, to take an adjacent stall. With urinals, this is only acceptable under exceptional circumstances.
2. When all the other stalls are disgustingly dirty, it’s also acceptable to take an adjacent stall.

While it’s possible 13 of the other 14 stalls were really dirty, it sounds like this individual was in gross violation of proper bathroom etiquette.

Adam writes the following:

My friend’s boss recently called him out because he caught him not lifting the seat to urinate while standing up. My friend (an attorney) retorted that the opening in the front was made precisely for this purpose and didn’t feel like he did anything wrong.

My position is that no matter how good you think your aim is, the seat belongs in the upright position if you are standing and urinating…especially in an office bathroom.

On the other hand I would not ever touch the seat at the Port Authority restroom (or similar public facility, airport, etc.) because everyone else has urinated all over it.

What is correct etiquette here? And can you address the work vs. public facility issue if you feel there is one?

First, I want to know how your friend’s boss caught him in the act with the seat down. Scratch that, I actually have no desire to know. As far as the etiquette goes, for once you will find the ICBE without a strong opinion one way or the other.

As long as you leave the seat clean, it’s okay to pee with the seat down. If you get a few drops on the seat – just wipe them up and go about your day. Now I’m not advocating peeing all over the seat and then getting out the mop, but those public seats can be pretty scary to touch, and the important thing is that everything is clean for the next person who uses the toilet.