>in even major cities with high population density
I'd say that was typically where the issue is. I wouldn't expect to find a bathroom in the middle of random forest of course but pretty much anywhere in suburbia/exurbia has grocery stores, Walmarts, McDonalds, gas stations, with restrooms you can use. Worst case, make a small purchase.
> 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.
> 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.
>For the bathroom, I (a man) peed sitting down. I’m not ashamed to admit it.
Rather the opposite, we (men) should be ashamed to pee standing up into anything that's not a urinal, it's gross. Also, relatedly, we should LISTEN when our cohabitants tell us any of that.
> What the parent described is probably due to other external factors (e.g. lack of choice, land restrictions or other things) that constrain behavior.
It's also a cultural thing. Just the other day I was minding my own business on a relatively central street in the European Eastern capital where I live and all of a sudden I see a Roma lady, in her early 50s, reasonably well dressed, coming towards the lightning pole that was on my left side, taking her underwear down and urinating, literally in the middle of the sidewalk, in plain daylight. Before that she had been talking with some acquaintances of her just outside a court-yard, I presume that if she really wanted to she could have asked those people if she could use their toilet.
> 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.
>>Restrooms within U.S. urban centers are hard to find, for patrons only
Like you said, find a restaurant, or a Dunking Donuts and buy something...or just sneak in. Look at the menu up as you're thinking and then run to the bathroom. At the places I usually is it I don't feel guilty, if I ate there yesterday I paid for today's bathroom use :)
Public bathrooms are a lot of trouble with cleaning, crime etc and usually are closed at nighttime in parks too. Tech can mitigate some of those concerns but still...
> 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.
> mostly going to be used by homeless (and a few people with medical issues like IBS)
This is a weird trope, and also just generally cruel. First: when public restrooms are generally available, they tend to be well used (I use them frequently in Tokyo, for instance). Second: even if they are mostly used by the homeless, that's good for them and us, because it means they have a humane place to use the bathroom, and it means we see less feces on the street and fewer places smell like piss.
> Having run into many public toilets and restrooms which were unusable because they were covered in feces or urine or had crazy homeless people in them harassing people [...]
As a matter of course- because really the issue of pay toilets is just one small protuberance from the much larger social problem, which is that currently society doesn't provide remotely appropriate care for a large segment of the mentally ill. That a tourist taking a piss in Manhattan entails thorny socioethical issues is surprising yet direct result.
The same problem repeats itself all over urban life. It's why the bus stop shelter doesn't keep you dry, why park benches are uncomfortable, and why you're likely to hear an ambulance siren at least once in an ordinary day. Someday society will realize that the underlying problem isn't a necessary truth, and everything will suddenly seem so much nicer.
> Just go to one of the countless public toilets outside.
If there even are public toilets, if they are open, if they are in a state to be used (and not just an uncleaned mess), if they are free... plenty of reasons to go to a restaurant to use their toilet.
> Public toilets aren't really for you, they're for the people who have nowhere else.
This is an incredibly stockholm-syndrome take. If you live in a place that isn't a total failed state, normal people actually can use the public toilets!
> 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.
"I have to pee outside" is going to count as a problem in most people's book.
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