Which is annoying, because there are only a fixed number of stalls (in my WeWork there are 7 total stalls for all the men in a 7 story building). I hate going from to floor looking for a place to take a shit. Unless you had something really sickening for breakfast or lunch, taking a shit should not take more than 2 minutes. I don't know what people are doing in the bathroom that takes them so long, but I suspect it's people taking a break from their work in privacy.
> The lavatories at the WeWork at 524 Broadway in Manhattan, incidentally, are terrific—enclosed stalls with clever toile wallpaper featuring a repeating print of surveillance cameras partially obscured by roses and leaves.
This. The toilet stalls in US are the worst. No privacy whatsoever. Seems like their design is meant to oppress. Hurry you back to work, grunt!
In WeWork I can go to a quiet dark room, with moody music, and take a shit, in peace.
> I used to regularly walk into public bathrooms in which someone had used the toilet and simply not flushed it
I use public restrooms once ever two days (sometimes even more) and I very rarely see that. Maybe people in your part of the world are less educated when it comes to using public toilets, or the janitors are not doing their jobs properly (if it matters I live in an Eastern-European capital city).
As for the automatic toilets, I hate them. I only had the displeasure of using them once or twice, and let me tell you, to have that flush of water invade your lower exposed parts all of the sudden while you're doing your toilet-related stuff is not at all nice, quite the contrary. Those toilets are the work of the devil.
> When you wish to visit the bathroom do so on one of your strolls around the office.
But then they will notice that your break did not coincide with the timer, and (depending on the floor plan of the open office), that you did not head for a walk, but straight for the toilets.
I'm always surprised by this. Why not have unisex bathrooms? In most companies, I have worked the bathrooms are just one toilet and sink. That way anyone can use it.
> What would have really helped was if staff weren't selfishly spending 5-10 minutes sitting on the toilet browsing the internet or playing games on their phones.
I can't agree with that. Without actually knowing for sure (I will guess that you weren't looking at other people while they poo), you are blaming employees for the lack of toilets. But in the rest of your description, it looks like it's clearly the company that failed to offer the most basic needs. Timing your team workers bathroom times doesn't look like a good approach to solve the problem.
I don't get this; this happened at my workplace too, until we installed a coded lock on the restroom (which was otherwise accessible to anyone in the building). What kind of boor has a professional job but can't piss in a foot-diameter hole and is too lazy to clean up when he does so?
If I can go a whole quarter without seeing some unspeakable mess in the bathroom of a fortune 50 company, that would be amazing. 7+ years in, so far no luck.
> I bet you close the bathroom or stall door when you poop though.
I do, but not because I'm shy someone might see (a glimpse) of me being naked; I do it so that they don't attempt to enter a toilet already in use. I find myself often not closing the toilet in after hours. In fact, I don't close the toilet at home cause I know the people who can enter won't. Except when I poo, I might, because I don't want them to smell it.
> You had me at "My own toilet all to myself". I understand not everyone in the world is loathe to use a public restroom, but Jesus H. Christ, people use public restrooms like apes in a zoo.
It's not just cleanlines: I've also encountered issues like the hand-soap or toilet paper having run out and not been replaced, toilets not working due to plumbing issues (in one office they installed a fancy new rainwater recycling system that didn't initially work, so toilets wouldn't flush), a toilet on the top floor of a building where the flush was very weak and the cistern would take minutes to slowly refill before you could flush a second time, poorly designed sinks that look pretty but splash water everywhere when you turn on the tap, or a building only having a single cubicle so that I'd need to walk to another building if it was in use.
> Bathrooms open to the public always attract garbage humans.
Only people who have hold minimum wage jobs in the service industry know this pain.
Everyone else keeps talking about treating people like humans never having seen the ugly side.
Like, for example, the side where you walk in on these fucks shooting up and then they threaten your life on the spot and leave a mess for you to clean.
Yeah, hard to have any compassion left when you've done that day in and day out while getting paid minimum wage and then going back to shit customers at the counter.
The easiest decision, is therefore, to close your bathrooms to everyone and discriminate equally. And maybe, only let the pregnant women and truckers use them.
> Had the driver asked to use your bathroom, he likely would have lost precious time and have been indirectly penalized for it.
What's the alternative? No matter how reasonable the expectations are, there will always be drivers who would rather pee in a bottle and end their shift 10 minutes early than spend 10 minutes finding a bathroom.
> One of the biggest perks of working downtown in a moderately sized or larger city is being able to go to the bathroom there outside of work hours.
I'm in a big city in Canada and there was a downtown farmer's market here for a while. Literally smack in the middle of the city, went up and down a few streets on Saturday mornings. Loved going, was a short walk and had lots of good eats, local produce, etc.
But no bathrooms. None of the local places would let you in if you weren't paying, and the only way I could make a head call was at the local YMCA -- and the only reason they let me in was cuz I was a member of their gym.
It's crazy to me how you can be in the center a huge edifice of planning, piping, conduits, etc. and still not be able to find a toilet.
edit: they did normally have porta-johns but didn't this morning. On at least one occasion I'd seen people tip them over, hopefully with no one in them.
> Oh, and there's a clean bathroom in every subway station.
So this will never work in the United States.
Snark aside, every time I ride a BART elevator with a pool of piss on the floor I wonder about this country. Somehow the idea of someone peeing without paying is so offensive that we would rather stand in piss than provide public facilities.
Which is annoying, because there are only a fixed number of stalls (in my WeWork there are 7 total stalls for all the men in a 7 story building). I hate going from to floor looking for a place to take a shit. Unless you had something really sickening for breakfast or lunch, taking a shit should not take more than 2 minutes. I don't know what people are doing in the bathroom that takes them so long, but I suspect it's people taking a break from their work in privacy.
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