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Doing some traveling this past weekend, I had the pleasure of going pee at DFW several times. Generally speaking I am a pretty big fan of airport bathrooms, some recent issues in ORD notwithstanding.

Anyways, on my final preflight pee I entered a bathroom, was pleased to note the presence of urinal partitions, and started the process at the far-right urinal of the then empty bank of 5 urinals.

At which point customer #2 entered, and proceeded to take up a position right beside me. WTF?! While urinal partitions can make it okay to pee beside somebody else when necessary, they don’t make it okay to simply throw all the rules of etiquette out the window. Even with urinal partitions peeing right beside somebody is always a last resort, not a first resort.

Needless to say I was emotionally scarred for the remainder of the trip.

ICBE reader John writes the following:

I was reading what and what not to do in a bathroom . Last year I was in my bathroom and saw a buck out my bathroom window , yes I took the shot while I did my business. Would that be a do or no do ?

I have two trains of thought here. First of all, this sounds like something that happened in your own home, in which case it’s perfectly fine for you to more or less do as you please, since you aren’t disturbing anyone else. With the possible exception of the buck, who unfortunately for him doesn’t really count in terms of bathroom etiquette. That said, I would not condone this behavior for a public bathroom.

I am however moderately confused by the process. Did you have the gun with you in the bathroom? Did you rush out mid-stream to find your gun? Presumably you had to open the window too. Did you wash your hands before you touched all these things? There are some logistical issues which would need to be sorted out in a case like this.

Overheard in a men’s bathroom in O’Hare Airport:

How are you doing today sir?
Sorry about that.
Lock your door sir.

-An unlucky member of the housekeeping staff

And that is one of many reasons you should always lock the door when you are using a stall…

A couple of days ago I posted about the Toepener. Well that generated a flurry of responses, or at least what we call a flurry around the ICBE. One of those response was from StepNpull, a similar product:

Great option but it’s not a new idea. StepNpull came out in 2007 which is the same concept. http://www.stepnpull.com/ Thanks

Hang on, two competing door opening solutions for your feet? I love me some sweet obscure bathroom-related products competition! Let’s see how they stack up in a series of completely arbitrary categories…

And it’s the StepNpull by a hair! Tough to argue with that price, though Beth in the original post suggests the Toepener may be easier to use in certain situations. Any volunteers to install one of each in the ICBE offices so we can torture test them?

The Toepener. It’s a door handle. For your feet. Which frankly sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea.

But you know somebody’s stretching it when this is featured prominently on the product page:

Each Toepener includes:

1. Signage for mirrors and doors
2. Four stainless steel screws per Toepener
3. One machined etched and powder-coated American aluminium Toepener

Yay for screws?

via Metafilter

S.E. writes the following:

Hi,

I have encountered several complaints about individuals who would wash their hair and bodies in a public washroom at a federal government work place. This practise is obviously disturbing as one would not expect to encounter a half naked man washing himself when you need to do your business.

Unfortunately I have not been able to find a Canadian health and safety regulation that says this is a wrong thing to do.

This seems to be more common with cyclists biking to work in the summer.

What is your take on the situation?

This is a tough question. I previously wrote about the practice of washing one’s feet in a public bathroom due to religious beliefs, where I concluded the following:

Tolerance of religious customs is good etiquette, and if a little foot washing is all we have to put up with, what’s the big deal?

So my initial temptation is to consider hair and body washing in the same category, but this doesn’t appear to be a case of religious freedom this time.

So what part of the process exactly constitutes bad etiquette? Obviously the chance for making a big watery mess is higher (and that’s certainly bad etiquette), but if the area remains clean that’s not the issue.

Washing one’s hair/body might take a long time, so if sinks are in short supply that would be a concern, but it doesn’t seem to be the case here.

It it unhealthy, as S.E. seems to assume? I can’t imagine washing one’s sweaty body or hair is any less sanitary than washing one’s feces-laden hands, so I’m not convinced it’s bad etiquette from a health perspective.

So the real issue appears to be a general uncomfortableness with the presence of partially naked men at the sinks. One thought is that we should all just be less prudish about a little skin, but the fact is etiquette is all about not making other people uncomfortable, or at the very least balancing your own personal comfort with that of others. Now one important thing we need to think about are the alternatives.

Sweaty, stinky people at work

So the real question is, does the benefit of being clean and nice-smelling offset the discomfort caused by your half-naked presence in the bathroom? I think sometimes it probably does.

Of course the ideal solution is to find some nearby showers or to have one installed, but this is the real world and ideal solutions don’t happen that often.

If you’re ever in Newport, you can visit some historical mansions. And if you visit The Elms, then you can take a gander at these fantastic urinals:

Now generally speaking, bad urinal etiquette aside I’m a fan of urinals. They are more efficient than toilets in terms of space occupied, time taken and water used. But urinals like those pictured here – yikes! Why don’t you just go ahead and stand in the middle of the room and pee in a cup? I’d get a serious case of shy bladder trying to empty into one of those…

I was out for dinner the other night, and in the time it took for me to use the urinal, I witnessed no fewer than two people walk straight out of stalls and out of the bathroom.

Gross.

With that in mind, here’s one approach to solving the problem of men not washing their hands:

From Moggit and DailyHaHa

If you’re a regular person, you might bust out a little air freshener from time to time. As Wikipedia so aptly puts it:

Air fresheners are consumer products used in homes or commercial products used in restrooms that mitigate unpleasant odors.

Notice anything missing from that description? That’s right, nary a mention of doctors or hospitals. That’s because if you’re in the medical profession, you don’t use air freshener. You use biological odor eliminator.

Photo courtesy of unnamed family member

Though the photo depicts the MediChoice brand, rest assured that Amazon has your biological odor eliminator needs completely covered. No word on what the doctors do for non-biological odors…

I was fortunate recently to be interview by Nara Schoenberg, writing a piece on office bathroom etiquette for the Chicago Tribune. The problem: A Serial Seat Pee-er Here’s some of what I had to say:

This person knows it’s gross. He knows it’s disrespectful. And he’s doing it on purpose.

Seriously, it’s hard to imagine an adult not knowing that peeing all over the seat is disrespectful to everyone around him. Still, you never really know the circumstances. Perhaps this was an obese individual who couldn’t even see the seat? Perhaps it was really only 2 or 3 drops at a time, and there were some hypersensitive coworkers describing this as peeing all over? Or perhaps this individual had been raised in a cave by wolves, being reintroduced to society only recently.

Really, you never know.

Read the full article

PS: Peeing on the seat happens to all of us (well, at least all of us who pee standing up) from time to time – just remember to clean up your mess!