Then it hit me – this isn’t something that was being done on purpose (at least I hope not). Etiquette is a complicated beast. The whole philosophy of etiquette is to be aware of others and to act in a way as to minimize or eliminate your negative impact on other people whenever possible. Those last two words are very important and bear repeating:

whenever possible

Etiquette is about doing your best when you can, and in this context not being gross when you can afford not to be gross, but sometimes grossness is a necessity.

Peeing all over the seat and not wiping it up is gross. It’s bad etiquette because you can and should clean it up.

Not flushing the toilet is gross. It’s bad etiquette because you can and should flush the toilet.

Taking a noisy poop is gross. It’s not bad etiquette if you can’t avoid it, and let’s face it – sometimes you can’t.

Did my eyes deceive me, or was this indeed a dual-flush toilet in the flesh? (I’ve only seen one once before) Well the next thing my eyes saw was this:

Curiously, I held down the right button and the toilet did indeed flush. Next, I held down the left button.

Nothing.

Apparently En Fuego managed to get their holds on a dual-flush toilet, but didn’t bother connecting the second button. Newsflash, dual-button is not the same thing as dual-flush!

On a side note, they also had a window in the bathroom opening into the restaurant! You could only see it from the sink, but still – creepy!

At first I was totally confused, since there was an available urinal, but it turns out he had been waiting for the one I had occupied (the other is kiddie-sized) since as soon as it auto-flushed, he headed in.

Which brings us to the topic of delay tactics.

There are any number of reasons you might need to kill some time in a bathroom – waiting for a urinal or stall to become available for example. And there are good ways and bad ways to kill this time.

Pacing around is one of the bad ways! Wash your hands. Check your teeth. Adjust your hair. Fish an imaginary eyelash out of your eye. Really, do something, anything other than just lurk around.

What I did not expect however was my first (First!) ever sighting of a dual-flush toilet in the flesh porcelain. Cirque uses those super-fancy almost like actual bathrooms porta-potties, and this is what awaited me inside, on top of the toilet:

Conveniently, they even had a sign explaining everything:

We are using dual-flush toilets to reduce our water consumption.

Now I’m not a big fan of the euphemisms of “Solid” for poop and “Liquid” for pee, but I’m prepared to cut them some slack for their water conservation efforts. Nice!

The fine folks over at Home Fixated brought One2Flush to our attention today. Simply put, it’s an inexpensive kit that allows you to retrofit your current toilet with dual-flush capabilities. Awesome!

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?

Because 2.5 billion people worldwide are without access to proper sanitation, which risks their health, strips their dignity, and kills 1.8 million people, mostly children, a year.

Every time you flush the toilet, think of all the people around the world who don’t have a toilet to flush. Think about how you’ve just flushed away more clean water than many people might see in a lifetime. Then ask yourself why a civilized country like the United States doesn’t routinely use dual-flush toilets to save a little water.

At work I have “the ideal situation” where there’s 1 urinal and a sit down toilet. Occasionally when I go in there to take a number 2 the person before me has used the sit down toilet to take a pee in, and they pee all over the seat. I wish that you would make it known that when there’s both the urinal and regular toilet option and you only need to pee to use the damn urinal.

Well said. Men, this one’s for you: if you have the choice between a toilet and a urinal, choose the urinal every time. I’m going to give you two good reasons:

1. Like the man implied above, it’s pretty easy to pee all over the seat of a toilet. It’s a lot harder to do this using a urinal.
2. Urinals tend to use a lot less water when you flush – at least here in the USA, this problem isn’t as large in countries with
]]> http://www.icbe.org/2009/09/14/use-the-damn-urinal/feed/ 0 http://www.icbe.org/2009/08/04/phone-calls-in-the-bathroom-and-aggressive-flushing/ http://www.icbe.org/2009/08/04/phone-calls-in-the-bathroom-and-aggressive-flushing/#comments Tue, 04 Aug 2009 06:42:04 +0000 msykes http://www.icbe.org/?p=1629 The other day I was in a position where I needed to do a #2 in public. I happened to be in a nice hotel at the time, so I settled into a clean stall to go about my business. Moments later, an individual occupied the stall next to me, sat down, dialed the phone, and proceeded to have a conversation.

In case you were wondering, this is not good etiquette. Now I understand that if somebody calls you, the temptation to answer can be almost unbearable. Still, you should resist this temptation. But to call somebody up from a public bathroom stall is a severe breach of etiquette, and frankly a little silly.

Now I couldn’t very well say something, as that would have been a breach of bathroom etiquette in and of itself, so I did the only thing I could think of.

I flushed. Loudly. And repeatedly.

I got lucky on the loudly part, since naturally the volume was beyond my control. I have no idea if I managed to alert the individual on the other end of the call to what was going on, but I do know the fellow in the stall next door started to have a lot of trouble hearing what was going on.

]]> http://www.icbe.org/2009/08/04/phone-calls-in-the-bathroom-and-aggressive-flushing/feed/ 0 http://www.icbe.org/2009/07/12/urinals-angles-of-incidence-and-splashback/ http://www.icbe.org/2009/07/12/urinals-angles-of-incidence-and-splashback/#comments Sun, 12 Jul 2009 06:39:31 +0000 msykes http://www.icbe.org/?p=1602 Generally speaking, I would consider the ability to easily use a urinal to be a distinct advantage that men have over women. Urinals are fast, convenient, and use less water/flush than a toilet – at least here in North America where we don’t commonly have dual-flush toilets at our disposal.

Now that said, not every urinal experience is a good one. Consider the urinal I had the displeasure of using earlier this evening. The one where my pee splashed all over my knees.

Yuck.

Now the thing is, most urinals don’t cause ridiculous amounts of splashback, but there are a few that do. Are they made of some weird, super-bouncy (to pee) material? Is the angle of the porcelain bowl such that it encourages splashing? Does the height merely make the splashback more noticeable? Can we please, please destroy all of these urinals right now?

It’s just about enough to make me head for a stall.

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