Yes, outside of the country clubs and Saks stores, ladies’ rooms are hardly spa-like. According to some past threads and posters, they’re ofte the worse of the two. Which would make sense, again, given the number of women who try to go #1, #2 and deal with #3 when there’s no waste bin, all while hovering above the bowl.
The big department stores downtown had a SEPARATE LOUNGE from the shitter room, with mirrors and upholstered furniture, where a lady in her girdle and high heels could catch a breather as she hauled her pink and white hatboxes from floor to floor. Not so much today, though I do see furniture in little alcoves SEPARATE from the toilets, sometimes, for nursing mothers mostly. The only toiletries I’ve ever seen are bottles of handwash near the sinks, and a steel dispensing machine full of tampons, handi-wipes and whatnot on the wall. I spend as little time in public restrooms as possible, contrary to what I’ve heard about some men, and the one time I accidentally went into the men’s room to do my business, I was shocked at how filthy and smelly IT was.
You know, I was going to go all low-brow and post something typically “me”, but I just can’t. I can’t. Sigh. Died? Yikes.
Oh - Hentor? No kidding! Most women’s restrooms are trashed. I can’t believe some of the filth I’ve had to - er - be surrounded by. It’s amazing. And don’t even get me started on the hoverers. Shudder.
Lastly, I don’t know if anyone else has been there, but when I was a kid, my parents took me and my bro downtown (Chicago) for some sightseeing. As kids are wont to do, bro and I had to go to the bathroom so the P’s took us to the Drake Hotel for a pitstop. I have never ever in my life seen such a bathroom - personal private little ROOMS!!! They had a PERSON in there who would, like, do bathroom person things (and to this day I am still not entirely sure what that involves)! At 12 years old, it was completely overwhelming. And frankly, it kinda still is.
Oh, God, how I hate women who hover. WTF, people? If it skeeves you so much, carry some antiseptic spray and alcohol wipes with you, cover the seat with TP, do whatever you have to do, but SIT on the fucking SEAT so you don’t leave a fucking mess for the rest of us. (I have, however, found that the splatter effect is occasionally the fault of an overly-energetic flushing mechanism.)
Seriously. Do they not understand that they’re the ones causing exactly what they’re trying to avoid?
When you have volunteers decorating and maintaining anything, the places the volunteers care about are going to be nicer than the uncared for places.
In the rare instances I’ve had access to a workplace restroom like the ones described in the OP, it’s because it was a small company and somebody was tasked with making the bathrooms “nice”.
[some faraway accent] In the lap o’ looxureh! [/some faraway accent]
Re: hovering…
“If you sprinkle
When you tinkle,
Be a sweetie,
Wipe the seatie.”
This is true, and I can’t speak to who decorated the bathrooms, but at religious institutions I attended I think it the fact that the womens’ rooms were in better states of repair still had more to do with old-fashioned patriarchal conditioning. Recliners, although perhaps donated, aren’t cheap either (more $ was definitely spent by the churches on womens’ rooms).
At one school I attended, I know the associate pastor of the church that contained the school did all the plumbing. There, the womens’ rooms always had every toilet working and well-sealed fixtures whereas the mens’ rooms rarely had both. The boys in my classes whined pretty heavily about how much nicer the womens’ rooms were, so I don’t think the womens’ rooms got more attention based on the number of complaints.
That ordeal still kind of pisses me off to this day, actually 
Obviously you’ve never had the vapors.
Hijack: “Men” and “women” are already plural. Adding an ess is just wrong, and "mens’ " and "womens’ " just gave me a mild stroke.
Where’s the Barcalounger? 
/hijack
Wait, so you would just say “men room” or “women room”? Or are you saying it should be written out as “men’s room” and “women’s room”?
The latter. Like gigi posted, men and women are already plural. A possessive irregular plural takes ‘s, not s’.
I took it to mean the latter.
I can understand the additional concessions for the ladies regarding breast-feeding accommodations and so forth. But there does also seem to a disparity between men’s room and women’s room decor as well. Who knows, maybe this was all decided a long time ago by some focus group study; “Men don’t like pretty things. Women do. Make Women’s room prettier.”
Well, you know, we tend to spend longer in there…
We’re a “Class A” office building, which means the hallways, elevators, and bathrooms have to be up to a certain standard. Which means, apparently, a couch in the ladies’ room. It’s not directly in there, more sort of a lounge before you actually get into the bathroom.
As others have said, it’s for breastfeeding, or resting, or another good one, crying if you should need to. Not that I ever have, but I’ve seen it used as such. Oh, and cellphone use.
But our ladies’ room is not decorated. And we get no supplies, other than what the men get, except for the tampon/pad dispenser that you can put a quarter in or whatever if you truly are desperate (and which I never remember). We also get shoddy toilet paper; which I resent. Our landlord is one of the biggest landlords around here and makes money hand over fist, they should be able to afford better TP.
Okay, that I agree with. I was just reading it as saying the first thing there (“men room”) and that seemed weird. Thought I would clarify.
#3 is exactly why I was always more afraid of what I’d find in the woman’s room than them men’s room when I worked at a restaurant. In the men’s room I might find all kinds of nasty stuff (once five feet up a wall), but I never found blood everywhere.
I always envision it as the bottom floor of Snoopy’s doghouse.
Like Hentor I had bathroom duty for a few weeks while working at a pizza place in college. The men’s room was not clean but we’re talking about people getting a little careless where they pee or leaving paper towels on the floor.
The women’s room was just awful. I honestly chalked it up to teenage girls who were trying to stay thin by puking their pizza back up in the toilet. Make that “in the vicinity of”.
As far as accoutrements goes though, the only difference was that the women’s room had a bin to dispose of tampons.
I think this thread ought to be in Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share instead of the Pit. I’ll move it there.
Gfactor
Pit Attendant