Need some opinion on this and hear that this is a good place to ask, so here goes:
Living in Chicago and a user of the CTA (which provides no public toilets that I am aware of) I have found myself in a bind, so-to-speak, to find a restroom from a local business after departing from the train.
I was a paying customer at several establishments around the train station for a few years until I asked to use the bathroom at several (always whilst making a purchase) and was turned away. I refuse to return to any of these establishments as they are willing to take my money but not treat me in a manner of decency IMO.
My girlfriend, however, is thinking I am nuts to stop shopping at these places as they are on my way home and would make things easier for us in the long run. She also is under the impression that the city might not allow some places to have a public washroom or that it might cost more to insure a business with one.
I beg to differ, I believe its up to the owner and that people just don’t want to clean up after others. I also think if your opening a business you should consider it as you may lose business from someone like me. AT one place I was getting haircuts at for 3 years and they turned me away! Now I need a haircut badly and need to find a new spot, she wants me to just go there…
Since you’re looking for opinions, I’m going to move this to our IMHO forum.
I find it really annoying when businesses don’t have bathrooms. I doubt insurance is an issue, but I couldn’t say one way or another. Perhaps it’s expensive to maintain the plumbing, so they are trying to limit use? It’s not something I’d avoid a business over, though. Not without a better alternative.
This is the wrong forum as there is no factual answer to this.
However, FYI, some cities have ordinances that state businesses open to the public must allow use of their restrooms. Whether it’s for everyone or just paying customers would depend on the ordinance. Milwaukee has such, and businesses can be cited for not adhearing to it.
So why don’t you check and see if yours does? You may get some revenge yet!
The problem is not you, it’s bums that want to use the toilets and make a mess of them, annoy and scare paying customers, etc. The stores probably find it easier to say no to everyone than face accusations of favoritism by allowing some people and not others.
High-end stores are usually better about this, because the homeless are less prone to walk in to them than the neighborhood 7-11.
A year or so ago, Mr. Athena and I were in a small town in Colorado on a vacation. We need some furniture, and we were in a small antique-and-custom-furniture place looking at a bed. We really liked the bed, it was a good price, and we were discussing whether or not we wanted to buy it.
It was also really bad weather outside - wind that practically pushed you down, and very cold.
Mr. Athena really had to use a restroom, so he asked the owner of the store if he could use one.
The owner didn’t miss a beat. He directed him two blocks down the street to the public restrooms.
We just stared at him. We’d been trying to decide whether to drop $2K in his store, and he couldn’t let him use the restroom. We left, went to the public restroom, and didn’t go back to the store.
A year later, Mr. Athena was selling a high-price kinda rare item via the Internet. He had one guy really excited about buying it, and they started to talk. Pretty quickly, Mr. Athena realized it was the same guy - the owner of the antique/furniture store.
He wrote him an email, telling him about our experience at that store, and ended it with “I don’t think I’m very interested in selling you Item X.” He never got a reply.
The last time I was in retail (20+ years ago), the restroom of our store was in the basement at the back of the stock room. No one was going back there (the pizzeria and bowling alleys less than 100 yards away, one in each direction, were the options). Having also worked a gas station, I was happy not having to clean up after people (nothing like a gas station rest room to let one know just how disgusting people can be).
This just happened to me the other day. I was out shopping, and was in Michael’s craft store, and I really really had to go to the bathroom… I looked and looked and there was no bathroom. So I was planning to go to JoAnn fabrics next, which I was pretty sure had a bathroom, from past visits. So I get to JoAnn’s and there’s no bathroom, so I ask a clerk and she says “we don’t have a bathroom.” So I ask her, “well how do you use the bathroom?” and she says, “oh, we don’t let customers use the bathroom anymore.” WTF??
So even though I was not finished shopping, I had to leave and go across the street to use the bathroom at Wendy’s, then went back to JoAnns and continued my shopping. While there, I heard an older lady was complaining to her friend, “how could they not have a bathroom! I’m not ever coming back here again!” And I told her, I know! How ridiculous is that?!?
So they lost that customer, but since it’s the only fabric store around, I really can’t boycott it.
The fact is, I usually have to pee about once every 1 1/2 - 2 hours, so does that mean that I can only go shopping for a maximum of 2 hour periods, since most stores don’t have public restrooms any more? That is just ridiculous! Many people go out running errands for an entire afternoon. What, we’re just supposed to hold it in for 5 hours while out shopping?!?!
I agree with you, and would tell the management of each place precisely how and when they lost my business.
However, your girlfriend might trump your righteous bladder’s indignation here. In the interest of all that’s good and peaceful…might want to let this one go.
I work at a gas station/c-store. We have two restrooms; 1 for customers, and 1 for employees. None of the employees will set foot in public restroom except to clean it. There’s a direct line of site from the service counter to it and vandalism is still a problem. Some users don’t bother cleaning up after themselves (by which I mean not flushing, urinating/defacting on the toilet/sink/floor, vomiting everwhere, etc). We’ve also had 2 toilets and a tank lid stolen since I’ve starting working there (don’t ask how it wasn’t on my shift). Even when the public restroom is out of order (which isn’t uncommon) we’re still not allowed to let customers use the employee restroom. For one thing it’s located in back room (meaning someone would have to escort a customer back there and wait outside the door), it’s not handicap accessible, and our liablilty insurance doesn’t cover customer accidents in employee-only areas (or so we’ve been told).
About a quarter of a century or so ago, when I was working retail in Las Vegas, it WAS an insurance issue. People can claim to be injured in the bathroom, and shoplifters find it easier to steal if they have access to bathrooms, and some bathrooms are in employee only areas. I’ve also seen the messes that people make in public bathrooms. Public restrooms MUST be checked and cleaned more frequently than employee only restrooms, too.
In the dress shop, we occasionally did allow a good customer to use our restroom, and almost always regretted it. They’d smoke (and the whole store was nonsmoking, which was another insurance issue), they made a mess, and they poked into stuff. I even caught one woman going into our break room after she was allowed to use the bathroom, and that’s where we kept our purses.
As a customer, yeah, I find it annoying when businesses don’t have public restrooms. I have IBS, which sometimes makes it urgent to find a bathroom right now. However, I can certainly understand why businesses who are not required to have public restrooms choose not to.
It’s probably the mess and vandalism, as other posters have mentioned. About a hundred years ago I managed a service station and hoo boy, people are pigs. It cost us a significant amount to have the restrooms cleaned regularly, and by “regularly”, I mean at least once per hour. I imagine businesses just get tired of the expense and grossness that comes with allowing the public access to their restrooms.
It sure is inconvenient though.
In Australia, you just wouldn’t ask. In a restaurant or pub, the restrooms are just there and clearly labelled (same for McDonald’s and large department stores), but you wouldn’t walk ito a place like a harware store and expect to be able to take a crap, no matter how many widgets you’d bought. There’s probably one staff toilet, out the back where it’s STAFF ONLY and where an unseen customer could steal stuff or trip over boxes and get hurt. I would never have considered it.
I spent many years working in retail, and we never let customers use the bathrooms. It was always store policy to not allow customers use the bathrooms because it was always in ‘the back’ and there was stock back there, not to mention employee belongings (purses and whatever), the safe, petty cash, things like that.
Now that I’ve said that, I remember one retail establishment where I worked that did have bathrooms for customers, but they were out front, and this was a large store, more like a department store. The employees were supposed to use their own bathroom, which was in the back.
Insurance was the specific reason that I was told to not allow anyone use the bathroom where I used to work. “If they slipped and fell, they could own the company!” was a standard line - an exaggeration, perhaps, but I’m sure there’d be a lawsuit in there somewhere.
Also, I work at a(and have worked at many other) store that DOES have public restrooms, and the mess is an issue. People are awful, awful creatures. You think they could TRY to keep their waste in the bowl, but you’d be wrong.
Joe
I’m curious - have you guys who are complaining about not being able to use the restroom ever had to clean a public restroom?
I used to work at a retail store that sold food, so we had to have a public bathroom. Every employee that ever had to do one clean-up turn has a horror story or ten about how absolutely disgusting the Public At Large is.
I would never consider asking to use a bathroom at a place that didn’t serve food. I think it’s cool that Best Buy has a public bathroom, but I am not upset that Michael’s doesn’t.
