A public/private bathroom question.

I have.

I have also been to strip malls where the “official” mall bathroom was, in fact, inside one of the stores, but there were signs all along the outside of the strip mall leading to it.

Unless it was a cafe/restaurant (not just a coffee shop) or a decent-sized department store, I wouldn’t expect a business to have a washroom open to the public, for the reasons that the other posters mentioned. I’ve read stories about retail workers finding used drug paraphenelia in their open-to-the-public washrooms, finding deliberate vandalism/theft/smearing of biohazardous bodily substances, discovering packaging from stolen items, etc. Too many bad apples use public bathrooms as secure places to do nasty things in.

I’ve worked at the banquet hall at my firehouse, and part of that included checking the restrooms every so often to make sure there was enough toilet paper and paper towels. This is a banquet hall that was mostly used for wedding receptions and formal parties, so you’d think people would be a little better behaved, but no. And just for the record, women are bigger pigs than men.
You would not believe the things people do in restrooms. Pee and poop on the floor, flooded sinks, vomit around the toilets, vomit in the sinks, entire rolls of toilet paper unspooled in a heap on the floor, paper towels strewn everywhere, gobs of hand soap smeared all over the place. It’s just amazing.
We had one wedding reception where a couple of drunken bridesmaids drew a dirty picture on the mirror with one of those stay-all-day lipsticks. That shit was really hard to get off. It was a greasy mess.

At the Science Center, we usually allow people in to use the restrooms-since they’re out before the exhibit entrances, so it’s no big deal.

HOWEVER…we’re right next door to Heinz Field (the Steeler’s playing ground, for those not familiar with Pittsburgh), and we rent our parking lot out, during games (we’re closed those days), concerts, events, etc.

Well, Kenny Chesney was playing next door, and people were paying to rent our lot. We started out letting them into the bathroom, until they started trashing the lot, becoming real nuisances, hindering our customers, etc. So finally, we just said, No More.

Oh, and the next morning, the parking lot was completely trashed-as was the parking lot at Heinz Field.

Assholes ruin it for everyone, sometimes. And occassionally, there IS no public restroom-it might be back in the stock room, depending on where you’re shopping.

Missed the edit window-one of employees had some drunken bitch complaining that she paid so much to park, and we wouldn’t let her use the bathrooms, blah blah blah.

Having had to deal with their shit all day, he lost it: “That’s right. You paid-TO PARK.”

People from small towns (myself included) probably expect restrooms available to customers. For example, at my parents’ shop, if someone needed to use the restroom but ours was out-of-order, they’d have to get in their car and drive four minutes to the bank. Plus, when everyone kind of knows each other, it’s awfully rude to deny someone that service. And also because of that, it’s not common for those people to do rude things to your bathroom.

I’m an American, and I wouldn’t ever think to ask. If I am out and need to use the bathroom and am not at shopping mall or big box store, I’ll go and find a fast food joint or something that has public restrooms.

Another American here, saying I, too, would never ask to use a non-public bathroom. Well, not unless it were an emergency and there weren’t any places nearby where I might expect to find a public restroom. It’s not clear to me whether the OP was in such a situation: I find it a little hard to believe that there weren’t any public restrooms anywhere in or near the station, but if that was indeed the case, (1) I sympathize with the OP’s predicament and don’t fault him for asking, but (2) I suspect it’s likely that the business owners in question had had bad experiences in the past with people wanting to use their bathrooms.

Another “people are filthy” story to report. I work at a public television station, located near the large public university football stadium. For years we’ve allowed our givers to use our parking lot for tail-gating. I don’t know if they were only recently allowed to come in to use the bathroom, or if just recently they became pigs, but they’ve left the bathrooms a mess! So much so that we’ve started putting up signs asking them to keep it neat so that we can continue to allow them in! These are people with presumably enough disposable income to give to a non-profit and afford football tickets and the wherewithal to plan a tail-gate party. But they still treat the restrooms like a pigsty.

I’ve had public restrooms from time to time and they are usually a good idea. Some facilities made them awkward, however, being located way in the back, past all the shopping area and past all the private office stuff. We had to put out a “no bathroom” sign to stop “bag ladies” in huge raincoats from setting up shop in our doorway and smuggling out everything they could stuff under there. We would still accommodate women with frantic youngsters, but it could not be on a regular basis or the homeless advocates would sue us.

If I were to make my restroom available to customers I’d have to make it ADA compliant, which would necessitate knocking out walls and either pushing my shop into the parking lot or the restaurant next door.

Since local zoning only requires public restrooms in food service establishments retrofitting it for compliance would be my responsibility, not the landlord’s. That’s beyond my means.

I agree with all the myriad reasons why business won’t let customer’s use employee bathrooms, I worked in a cafe for a few years and we had several horrible instances of poop smeared walls.

However I do think that employees need to be aware of ADA regulations and be sure to train employees to recognize situations in which exceptions may be made-- such as with a customer with a disability like Crohn’s. My mom has MS and my friend has Crohn’s and I’ve heard them ranting about their own horrible experiences with being denied bathrooms. Stories like this: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080415/COL02/804150304/1163 are prime examples.

My mother used to make it a point to frequent a local Osco Drug that often allowed her to use their employee bathroom. The managers knew when it was right to make exceptions to the rules.

I have worked many retail positions in my day, and the only one that had a public restroom was a maternity store. You might want to keep that in mind if you find yourself out and about with a need to use the bathroom.

I myself have no issue with businesses that don’t have public bathrooms. They’re open to sell things, not to give out restroom access, so its their choice if they want to bother. However, I personally do boycott places that HAVE them, but have signs all over saying ‘purchase required for restroom access.’ This is their choice too, but it is my choice to boycott places which are dicks about restroom priviledges. The worst offender was this deli I was in a couple months ago where I intended to buy a soda but had to piss first. I went to the bathroom and got yelled at by an employee on my way in, and I told him I was buying a drink as soon as I got out and he said ‘no, you must buy first.’ I stormed out, and that’s where I officially started my boycott.

In the US, arent there OSHA requirements as well?

I know that some previous co-workers got together and filed an official complaint in regards to the retail store they worked at. The store was a stand-alone and accommodated apx 15 retail employees and 6 business employees in the back of the store, and an additional 4 misc employees (inventory, management, etc). There was one Men’s single-toilet room and one single-toilet Women’s bathroom. Combine this with 15 avg customer’s in store at a time and as many as 30 on our busiest days (which was Thurs, Fri, Sat, & Mon and/or the 1st, 15th, & 20th).

Sometimes the line for the bathroom was 4-5 (mostly women) and some would go ahead and use the Men’s room - oh, and every other week one of the bathrooms would be out of order for the day (sometimes 2 days), or sometimes someone would be in the bathroom for a long long time. It was ridiculous. I think the women filed the complaint because a lot of them were coming down with UTI’s repeatedly.

Mark me down as being appalled that people demand that every convenience store and jewelry shop let you use their “public” restroom. As was mentioned above, that may be because I’m in an urban environment. Things like that just don’t exist in great numbers. Around here, if you boycotted every store that refused to let you use their toilet, pretty soon you’d have nowhere to shop.

It’s not that hard to find a hotel, restaurant, or bar where you can pee.

When I worked at the video store, I had this argument with a customer. Her daughter, maybe 5 or 6, needed to pee. The woman asked to use our public toilet. I told her we didn’t have one. She blew up at me. She yelled at me for our poor customer service, and threatened to take her business from us. (I looked at her account. She gave us maybe $10 per year in business. Buh bye.)

The thing is, we didn’t have a restroom. We had a store room with a toilet. There were high shelves with heavy objects on them, pointy metal things, the computer server, and boxes full of credit card impression. And we weren’t insured for having a restroom. No fucking way I’m setting a small child loose back there.

I’ve thought it might be a nice idea to maybe have public-as in city government owned-restrooms in shopping, and/or down town areas if only for emergencies.

Of course, they’d probably be completely disgusting. But I’d hate to have to be the woman in the article cited above. (Perhaps things like that could be related to having handicapped tags?)

Toys R Us has large bathrooms, too. With changing tables, if this is among your bathrooming needs.

I agree. Most small businesses are located in rented spaces with limited facilities. The bathrooms are usually in the backroom, which are not set up for public access. This is on top of the never-ending labor required to keep them clean.

CTA is aware of the problem and will either increase the number of toilets available or make PEE the official smell.

Somebody stole the chain out of our public toilet today. Yes, somebody actually took the lid of the tank and removed the chain that’s attached to the plunger thing. The little lever is broken too. So no public restroom until maintance gets around to fixing it. Since the employee restroom works it’s not a high enough priority for someone to come on the weekend. We put an out of order sign on the door, locked it, and put a map rack and garbage can in front it. Here’s the weird part. I was only yelled at twice by a “customer” for it. Both times by the same guy. He was made because he “only needed to take a piss” and wanted in since our urinal wasn’t broke. Then he started yelling about “this f_cking store” and that he’d “have the whole place shut down”. Nobody else complained about not being able to use our restroom, usually we get at least half a dozen tantrums a shift.