Take them with me?? I’m sorry, but fuck you! I say that with some humor and some horror too. What in the bloody hell am I going to do with a used tampon? (pun DEFINITELY intended) I mean…
I don’t always carry a purse. Especially on light days (like the last day of my period). A couple of tampons easily slide into a pocket. Some sort of nasty scented purse is not going to cut it.
I kind of pride myself on being clean and neat. What if someone ever found that nasty bloody little pouch? What if I got into an accident and they went through my purse to look for contact info and that’s what they found? draws into a full body shudder
As far as I’m concerned the farther away we get from our forebears in things like this the better. They washed their blood-soaked rags. I use a tampon.
It is difficult even to wrap them, especially on heavy days, but I am more willing to do that. Only there must be a garbage can in the stall. Preferably one of those heavy ones. I am not carrying my tampon into the main area of the bathroom, even.
I never flush on septic systems either. I add my voice to the chorus suggesting a nice note. You won’t stop the drunks but most of us girls when sober don’t want to jam up the toilets; it’s embarrassing. But we don’t know not to!
If I had a dollar for every tampon I’ve pulled out of old drain systems, I’d pay off a Corvette!!
Modern PVC piping is smooth on the inside, and the little white mice flow gently down the pipes with the water & paper. Old cast iron or even worse galvanized piping is rough and tends to catch the little fuckers. Once the water is past them, they sit there & dry to the pipe, causing a nice little clog, which then catches the next one, and the next one, and so on until your pipe is totally clogged and your plumber is doubling the bill because it’s a MAJOR pain in the ass to get those things off of a snake cable.
I had a call to a customer’s home one time for a clogged drain. I went out and had to get on the roof (old house, no cleanout in the yard, cast iron pipes) to snake it out. He came up to the roof with me to watch me work. In talking, he mentioned that he had had a really bad weekend, and that he was glad it was Monday. I ran about 120’ of cable down the drain and heard it clear with a “whoosh”. As I pulled the cable back out, no less than 12 tampons were wrapped up in the cable. I nodded to him and said “I see why you had a bad weekend!!” He bill went up with every little white bundle of joy!
I forgot to mention another complicating factor, which is the size of the stalls. I’ve been in bathrooms where the stalls were so small that it was impossible to get into them and close the door. Now, I’m fat, granted, but when there is literally one inch of clearance between the throne and the stall door so that the user has to straddle the seat in order to open or close the door…let’s just say that this situation does not increase any goodwill between a woman and the establishment. It’s not something that the workers can realistically do anything about, other than take down the doors and put in a cloth curtain, which has its own problems, but if a woman is even slightly buzzed, and has already had to manuever to get into the damn stall and close the door, she’s not likely to be in the mood to further manipulate a bloody tampon. Even a quite small woman is likely to be disgusted at the meagerness of space in some stalls.
Speaking of commercial restrooms, I hate it when there’s no paper towels. I can and will use an air dryer on my hands, but what if someone has spilled something on me? I need to dampen a paper towel and try to get it off. The paper towel, of course, goes in the trash can, not down the toilet.
Touchless faucets, on the other hand, are pretty nifty.
To sum up:[ul]
[li]Make sure that the bathroom is clean[/li][li]Make sure the trash is emptied on a regular basis, in each stall and in the main room[/li][li]Put up a sign, saying that your plumbing is old and cranky and can’t deal with tampons[/li][li]Make sure the bathroom is properly supplied, with decent toilet paper[/li][li]Paper towels are a MUST[/li][li]Adequate space is a must[/li][/ul]
When I moved up here and got on septic, my friend told me in no uncertain terms never to flush a tampon. I’ve had to a few times when they slipped out but other than that I obey.
Even on town sewer when I was growing up I didn’t since my father said not to.
How is that a male authority figure thing? The Jezebel article took the same tone–the author got extremely mad whenever the toilet would back up and her male housemate got annoyed. I don’t think it’s a male/female thing, but a common sense thing.
I had a housemate who used to do this and I thought it was absolutely gross. She used to chuck the plastic wrapper in there as well and once I found a condom. It’s not a fucking litter bin!!
Tampax boxes say something about it being best to chuck them but they are flushable. I thought they ended up in the sea - radio 2 had a lovely feature about the top ten types of litter that people encounter at beaches. I’m in the UK btw and am wondering if I’m just a freak for flushing them.
But yes, PROVIDE A BIN WITH A LID. I hate it when workplaces don’t do this, and restaurants and pubs are nearly as bad. Plus surely you can’t flush the applicator.
I forgot to post about my most horrifying tampon related incident.
In Venice, I stayed in a pretty basic youth hostel. Dormitories, bread roll for breakfast, no toilet seats. And no bins in the toilet cubicles.
So I was on the end of my period for the first couple of days there and had to wrap up the tampon, take it out of the cubicle and chuck it in the bin beside the sinks. Not great, but what else am I going to do. I seriously doubt that place’s plumbing could have handled it and like I said above I don’t flush tampons.
And then whilst balancing on the edge of the toilet, I looked up and discovered an alternative option…Just sticking them (pads as well) amongst the wooden beams. Yes, that’s what some girls were doing.
I had this OCD-esque need to look up a few other times whilst I was there and apparently the cleaners didn’t know or didn’t care.
I’m amazed at how many women flush them, according to this thread, but I have to say I’m also surprised to learn that the boxes tell you to flush them. Pretty fucking irresponsible of the manufacturers, in my opinion.
As a kid I was always taught never to flush anything except pee/poop and toilet paper. It’s a toilet, not a watery trash can, for fuck’s sake. The design of a tampon is to absorb moisture and expand. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realize that the expansion could cause a clog down the line.
“Replace your plumbing” you say? Yeah, right. What about people in apartment buildings, what should they do? Should the management re-plumb the entire building, including down through the area below ground to where it meets up with the public sewer? My wife has wrapped them and thrown them in the trash her entire life. I can say with certainty that they do not smell, although maybe it’s because my wife is just dainty.
Although I do sympathize with the size of some public bathrooms. I know I wouldn’t want to negotiate the undies around the thighs, skirt hiked up, straddling the toilet, dealing with the bloody plug and disposing of it, and inserting the new one, all inside some of the bar bathrooms I’ve had the misfortune of visiting.
Here’s another vote for signage, if you can swing it, if only because there’s clearly so many people who honestly have no idea tampons can be a problem. Nice-looking signs will have the strongest effect, and if they get tatty, replace 'em.
I’m amazed that so many people DON’T flush them! I’ve lived in many houses, many apartments, and have occasionally had to use public or employer facilities over the years, and I’ve NEVER had a tampon-related plumbing issue.
My used tampons look more like liver on a bloody string, there is no way to take them out without getting blood on my fingers, and wrapping them is very dicey because clots fall off. That said, I make the effort and wrap them, if the establishment posts a sign.
The issue of clots makes removal of a saturated tampon difficult enough; I can’t imagine having to wrap one up to throw it away outside the stall. And now I’m supposed to take it with me when I leave the restroom? :rolleyes:
Does the absorbancy of a tampon affect its ability to clog plumbing?
Do they not make dedicated sanitary protection bins in the US? With the L shaped swing lid that lets you place the object on the flat bit then swing it shut with the thing inside? In the UK it’s rare to find a public loo that doesn’t have them.
I second this - without being too graphic, if you have a heavy flow, and wrap it up, it will end up being a toilet paper cylinder of about 4" through in order to make sure it doesn’t leak through to become a shiny red ball. The bits that come out are stuck to it, so the wrapping can rarely be done with one hand, unless you want to fling stuff everywhere.
I’m sorry OP - Dirty Tampons should be flushed. To give you the other viewpoint - I work in an office, and we were told we had to wrap instead of flush due to the same plumbing issues. Though I never made a big deal about it, I still flush.
There is no way in hell I’m putting a wrapped, clotty, bloody, heavy cotton tampon in the open trash can, which is 6" away from the sink and bowl. None, zero. And I certainly don’t want the other women in the office to do so either.
I use Tampax, with a cardboard applicator and paper wrapper. It all goes in the bowl, as per the directions and the custom. That stuff is a biohazard, even from the freshest vagina, and I’m kinda surprised anyone would treat it so lightly. If you had some stranger take a bloody bandage from his arm, absolutely soaked in blood and with bits of tissue hanging off of it, would it be okay for you if they just tossed it in the nearest trash bin with a little TP around it? Not me…
That said, I don’t flush at my sister’s house and my dad’s, which both have septic, and I’d probably try to honor your sign. But probably wouldn’t, especially if I was drinking. Sorry, but that’s the truth.
I have had a plumber with 20 years experience tell me to NEVER EVER flush tampons, and that they were the #1 cause of blockages. I grew up in a house with a septic tank and we could only flush waste and TP. Even though we are on city sewer now, I still don’t flush ‘em and am kinda baffled at people who do. Plumbers are freakin’ expensive.
Well, our big city sewage system can certainly handle it. I’ve never heard of this problem here. In the first stage of sewage treatment the sewage flows through grates which filters out solids like tampons, pieces of clothing, and shopping carts. Yes, by the time it gets to the plant, the sewage pipes are big enough for those. How you get a shopping cart into a sewage line, though, is a mystery to me. The solids are removed and taken to the landfill. I’ve never heard that tampons are not to be flushed. I always have, and have never had problems.
When I went to Cancun a few years ago all the toilets had signs asking users to not flush toilet paper because the pipes were too small. That took some some getting used to.
To the OP, I wish you luck with your bathroom signs. I hope drunken literacy is one of the skills honed by your patrons.
