Are there pay toilets in America?

[Jackmannii]

@mnemosyne

I’ve never seen one in Canada or the US, but they are very common in Europe. Usually you put a coin into the door, you go in, do you stuff, and when you leave you can get the coin back, but sometimes you have to pay an attendant, who hands you a wad of toilet paper, and that’s it.

Do you have to return the paper after you’re finished with it?

I haven’t seen a pay toilet in decades either.

Whatever happened to those high-tech Murphy beds they were supposedly going to install in airports, so you could get a paid nap in comfort? Security concerns?

[Voyager]

@Lynn Bodoni

In at least one department store that I can recall, the coin taker was not affixed to the stall door, but the door to the ladies’ room itself. I don’t know if the gents’ room had a similar arrangement or not. I do remember that women would wait outside the door, waiting for someone else to exit, and thus save the dime entrance fee.

All the pay toilets I’ve ever seen had the coin taker on the stall door.

I’d never heard how the woman’s movement caused their elimination, but it seems plausible. I suspect the pay toilet lobby was not the most powerful, though I’m suprised that the libertarians were not up in arms about this encroachment on the free market.

A nice British lady we met on the QE2 25 years ago called going to the toilet ,“spending a penny.” There didn’t seem nearly as many pay toilets the last time I went to England as opposed to the first time - are they disappearing in Europe also?

[Mops]

@mnemosyne

I’ve never seen one in Canada or the US, but they are very common in Europe. Usually you put a coin into the door, you go in, do you stuff, and when you leave you can get the coin back, but sometimes you have to pay an attendant, who hands you a wad of toilet paper, and that’s it. It isn’t very expensive, but I never liked it, especially the ones with attendants, since I always felt like they thought it was wrong of me to even be asking for toilet paper (this was mostly when I lived in Germany, and I was 9-12 years old). I guess being a public bathroom attendant isn’t the most cheerful, engaging job on the planet.

Pay toilets are fairly common over here, true, but I have never encountered one where you’d get the coin back after (i.e. where the coin was a sort of deposit).

Did you take the coin back from some sort of plate? In this case you might have helped yourself to the attendant’s tip jar.

[According_to_Pliny]

Palo Alto just installed a number of pay toilet kiosks.
They are supposed to be “self cleaning” whatever that means. ( I haven’t ventured inside one)

They are supposed to keep the panhandlers from peeing behind the dumpsters, but they are not flush enough to use the kiosks, except by sneaking in as someone else leaves.

They are really just a way for an advertising agency to get around bans on street billboards, since the ads on the wall pay part of the costs.

The whole problem would be better solved with ordinary free toilets in the park areas or by having sidewalk side entrances to the restrooms in the civic buildings. Like they have in San Francisco.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@A.R. Cane

Pay toilets were quite common in the 40’ and 50’s. There were devices on the stall doors, usually requiring a nickel, or dime, to open. Men’s urinals were not restricted, so it was more discriminatory against women. I’m not sure when the practice went out of favor and/or became illegal, but I recall adults fuming about it when I was a kid. I’m guessing it was in the 60’s.

Sounds right. I was a kid during the 1960s, between 2 and 12 years of age, and I do remember seeing them, and they were familiar enough that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see them. They tended to be in places like restaurants, IIRC, not just freestanding public restrooms in public areas.

I think they were already on the way out by the early 1970s.

[Sal_Ammoniac]

Boston in recent years has installed a number of high-tech self-cleaning pay toilets. I’ve never actually used one, but they’re fairly prominent near high-traffic sites (Faneuil Hall, for instance). I recall there was some controversy (not in Boston) over a self-cleaning pay toilet that malfunctioned, drowning the occupant or some such, which led to delay in their installation here. Then there’s the other controversy over their being used for assignations with prostitutes.

Be that as it may, we have 'em here.

[Foxy40]

When I was growing up in the Northeast, they used to be all over at the highway rest stops. Hadn’t seen them in years until I was in Dublin on vacation and they were in the bus station. It was actually to get into the rest room, not the stall as I had remember from childhood.

[Labdad]

I recall them as quite common in the 60’s in train stations and airports. Didn’t see them as often in the 70’s. (Steal This Book! was published in 1970)

As I recall, there was usually a non-pay toilet at the end of the row, there for emergency purposes. And it was always so nasty, you didn’t mind paying the time to use a pay toilet!

[mnemosyne]

@tschild

Pay toilets are fairly common over here, true, but I have never encountered one where you’d get the coin back after (i.e. where the coin was a sort of deposit).

Did you take the coin back from some sort of plate? In this case you might have helped yourself to the attendant’s tip jar.

I’m sure I saw some like that. Thinking back, maybe it wasn’t that common… It was kind of like for supermarket grocery carts… you could put a coin in to unlock the door and go in, but could only get your coin back if you closed the door on the way out. That way you could use it, but you got your money back and so not “anyone” could go in after you (that is, if you really cared about keeping that 10 pfenning!) I was quite young, but I distinctly remember one like that. The stall doors were red-orange!

I’m pretty sure I never stole from the attendant’s tip jar!

It’s been a while, though, and since my best memories aren’t about public washrooms, maybe I’m just making stuff up at this point!

[Dr_Paprika]

I’ve certainly seen pay toilets in France, Sweden, Germany and Colombia. There are also several countries where people generally are expected to carry their own toilet paper but where this can be supplied for a tip – e.g. some Chinese tourist attractions.

Never seen one in the States.

[SailBunny]

I used one in a mall in Alice Springs, Australia. Its in the middle of the Outback, and there is a visibly impoverished aboriginal population. We got the impression that the fee ($1-2) and the attendant were to prevent the local aboriginals from camping out in the bathroom.

[control-z]

I grew up in the 70’s, have been up and down the East Coast quite a bit, and have been probably 35 states in my lifetime, I’ve never seen one.

What is your incentive these days to use a pay toilet? Are they particularly cleaner than a regular one? Doubt it. Or are they just in an area that otherwise has no facilities and somebody wants to make some money?

[sqweels]

I guess we can chalk it up to “one little victory” against “the Man”

[Mama_Zappa]

@Voyager

…
A nice British lady we met on the QE2 25 years ago called going to the toilet ,“spending a penny.” …

So that’s where that expression came from!! Ignorance fought quite nicely, thank you

I have seen a pay toilet precisely once - at some roadside diner on the way to Ocean City, Maryland, about 35 years ago. We paid one dime, then took turns letting each other into the stall to do what needed to be done.

I did fairly recently see a bathroom with an attendant - on the boardwalk at Wildwood NJ. All she did was sit there - didn’t offer assistance nor did she apparently do anything to keep it tidy. But there was a line of women waiting to use the bathroom (there weren’t many public restrooms). A tip wasn’t mandatory but was clearly expected. Maybe it was marginally less slovenly than a completely unattended bathroom would have been.

[AuntPam]

I am quoting myself from a thread about a year ago, called Legality of Pay Toilets. No point in retyping all this stuff:

I believe I can shed some light on this—and I may have played a small part in the change in the law. Back in the late 1960s, as a student at Cornell Unversity, I and a friend rented a table in the student union entrance (the lobby of Willard Straight Hall) just before Christmas break. There we put up a sign which stated the thesis of our Cause:

PAY TOILETS ARE AN AFFRONT TO HUMAN DIGNITY!!!

Indeed they were, as any woman caught short without a dime knew, dancing on her toes, knees locked together, praying that some other woman with a rebellious or sympathetic streak would “hold the door” and allow her to steal a pee from [INSERT AIRPORT NAME HERE.] (Guys could also get caught in a similar fix, though not as often, because you can’t use a urinal to…errr…well, you get the picture.)

At our table, we had about ten thousand stickers available for sale—all the same size, bearing our slogan, and perfect for affixing to the doors of the stalls.

Despite suspicious inquiries from the Left and the Right (were we mocking them? did we think this was SERIOUS?), we sold out—or damn close to it.

I saw these stickers for many years afterwards in a wide variety of locations and heard anecdotal evidence that they had travelled to both coasts and most airline hub cities in between. As well as a few European capitals.

And a few years later, women in state legislatures all over America rose to their feet, cleared their throats, and began “Today, I am here to discuss a somewhat indelicate subject…”

And that, my children, is why you have no idea what the hell a pay toilet is. Lucky you. Now quit peeing on the seat, or I’ll mop it up with your hair.