Wow, ignorance fought here. I honestly thought these things were standard in all bathrooms.
Is it “passive aggressive bitchiness” to sincerely want to know where there are binless women’s restrooms? Look, I have perhaps another decade of dealing with menstruation, I take long road trips a couple times a year - hell yes if there’s a problem spot (such as the route DiosaBellissima mentioned) I want to know about it! Annoying enough if you are aware of the problem and can plan around it, it would REALLY piss me off to be surprised by it.
You’re looking for animosity where it doesn’t exist in this case.
No, I’m looking at your posting history as a whole, where I’ve seen you do this shit a lot. Apparently you aren’t even aware you’re doing it, but you often come off as excessively dramatic and overly emotional when debating something and your phrasing is often passive aggressive.
She does have a point, though - if tampon-flushers are arguing that they flush because there are no bins available, but the only places that don’t have bins are slums, ghettos, and the hood, maybe you should just wait until you’re not in one of those places. Slums and ghettos probably don’t have the plumbing facilities designed to handle your tampon anyway.
That said, if the bins are all like the ones DiosaBellissima posted… Eww.
You guys should get the cool plastic bins.
Well, to be fair, I think I was the only one to mention the hood. As usual.
ETA: And you have to admit, Broomstick, it does sound a bit disingenuous to pretend that you want to know the areas on the nations highways and byways so that you can be prepared to skip them if you are ever on a road trip. I mean…you were just joking with that, right?
Not all of us have that luxury, but it’s nice of you to suggest it. Trust me, I too wish there was a luxury (or, ya know, equipped) bathroom along the 5 hour drive I have to take four times a month, but alas- there is not. And I’m sure the folks in the hood wish they could pop out to suburbs to change their hoot plug, but that is’t always a option. We make due, of course- I’m simply saying the assertion that every public bathroom in the whole wide world has a trashcan or tampon robot or whatever isn’t true.
No, I wasn’t. I don’t know how to convince all of you that I really want to know if there’s a problem area to watch out for. I really do take long road trips a couple times a year and if I have to pack ziplock baggies to deal with menstrual waste I’d kinda like to know ahead of time so I can bring it into the stall with me, ya know?
As I mentioned, my experience with binless toilets has largely been remote rural airstrips (back in the days when I used to take really long trips). Knowing that, I packed not only any needed menstrual supplies but also my own damn toilet paper because it was a lot like camping at times. Why would I want to be any less prepared on the highway? But I am NOT flushing tampons down a toilet, I’ll pack them out in a ziplock first because I think that’s the right way to handle it.
Honestly, I don’t ever recall stopping at either a highway rest stop, a gas station, or truck stop where the restrooms that were explicitly for women didn’t have a bin. Even the unisex ones at least had a trash can. Maybe I’ve just been lucky. Maybe it’s because with the gas stations and truck stops I tend to stop at certain chains and they’re civilized. I don’t know. It blows my mind that toilets lacking bins is in any way a chronic problem but given how many people have stated it I am at least open to changing my position.
As for being “passive-aggressive” -hey, if I’m really feeling bitchy I don’t have a problem stating it up front. What I’m inclined to bitch about here is:
- Clogged toilets that could have been prevented.
- People who leave a filthy mess in the toilet - which I doesn’t apply to anyone in this thread, but could be extended to asshat businesses that don’t provide proper means of disposal for such things as used tampons, and don’t empty the fucking garbage on a regular and frequent basis.
I’m not so much asserting that every public bathroom has a trashcan so much as assuming it. And I assumed incorrectly, I understand. Having grown up in a country where no bathroom does not have a bin, I find it hard to imagine a country at an equal level of development to mine not having one. To me it is on the same level as a bathroom not having a sink, or hand dryers/towels.
I would also consider having to take a 5 hour drive every week to be outside of an average person’s experiences. And I don’t know what people living in the hood would do with their blood-receptacle. I don’t have an awesome tampon robot in my bathroom but I do have a little plastic bin lined with a plastic bag that I change after period week.
Broomstick, stop. Just stop for a minute and listen to me closely. When you typed the following phrase, (bolding mine); you were deadly serious? Tell me that again with a straight face, and I will let it go.
Tell me that you meant that in all seriousness. Tell me that again. That you are implying that you will take note of the spots that Diosa notes on the nation’s back roads and lonely highways so that you will be prepared just in case you happen to stop by those exact same Gas n’ Go’s.
My apologies in advance for giving you a hard time if that really is the case and you weren’t just bustin’ my chops.
30 years ago a public toilet in Bristol did not have a bin. Goody two shoes here wrapped her tampon in some toilet paper and put it in her pocket while the guys waited outside. Hitting the streets once more - it must have been around 1am - we were accosted by the police who asked us to turn out our pockets. I implored PC Plod not to unwrap, but he did - probably thinking I had a good stash of weed. Poor old Plod.
Do I win?
Yes, that really is the case. Why is that inconceivable?
No, I’m not going to minutely note the entire route, but I did want to know if it was somewhere I was likely to go. Like, for instance, if she had said the route was between Detroit and Toledo I would definitely have an interest because I anticipate driving along there once or twice a year for the foreseeable future. She did mention it was between where she lives and Las Vegas, which area I am unlikely to be in, but I have been sent to Phoenix twice in the past which isn’t that far afield. And I almost wound up in New Orleans earlier this summer. Yes, I travel extensively at times. Just like I pack a cooler of snacks and drinks, and emergency bag for car repairs and/or being stranded overnight, and regular old road maps even if there’s a GPS available YES I want to know of possible bathroom issues.
Maybe I just overprepare compared to others.
Hell, I’ve posted two genuinely bitchy threads in the past about about deplorable bathrooms I’ve encountered on my travels in the past. I’ve been on backroads in Kentucky where the “restroom” is an old fashioned outhouse pit toilet. I’ve used squat toilets. I work in a job where we’re sometimes lucky just to have porta-potties. I’ll even confess to shitting in the woods on one or two occasions where I’ve had no alternatives. I take that whole “be prepared” thing seriously when traveling.
Broomstick, I will stop fucking with you now. I was allllll ready to call bullshit, but like a witness under interrogation, you have stuck unwaveringly to your story. Thanks for indulging me.
Cinnaminnamon, I once saw a high tech, hands-free, techno-fancy feminine waste disposal unit --came complete with a sign stating it was specifically for lady things!-- at an airport, and I distinctly remember being wowed by it. And this wasn’t in 1997, mind you. This was two months ago. As others have mentioned, bins, or trash cans as the rest of us call it, aren’t some alien anomaly in women’s restrooms, but to the extent that they do exist, they are typically some dinky little container screwed onto the wall, not changed nearly frequently enough. They don’t come with hand-waving, odor-eating software.
<Dies… Literally dies 1,000 times>
I don’t know about you, missy, but whenever I go anywhere, I make sure AAA gives me a map of which roadside stops have proper feminine hygiene disposal units. I will not even think about driving on your highway until I am certain that every diner, every bar, every Walgreens has proper disposal bins. And if one doesn’t, the UN will hear about this. This type of negligence will not stand.
I can’t believe there are people in this thread trying to guilt us into feeling bad that plumbers are getting paid $400 to get tampons out of people’s pipes. This is their bread and butter, I’d like to see you try to take it away from them. And they knew they were going to take a lifetime of shit in their faces when they signed up, doesn’t seem to bother them much (I work with several plumbers FWIW - I’ve discussed this with one of them and not only does he flush non-flush-able babywipes in his house with no issues, but insists his wife flushes her tampons because otherwise the dog gets at them).
Like many in this thread, I’ll wrap and dispose of tampons if it’s convenient. Which it often is not. I work at 4 businesses with public restrooms and only one has an appropriate receptacle for my juicy juicy cotton-rods.
No, that I or other owners have to pay plumbers to do it or do it myself. Total bill weekend before last: $6,500 including tax, still cleaning up shit from the basement. Five times before that, from females who ignored the sign in the bathroom: about $200 each time or do it ourselves, with shit in the basement that plumbers don’t clean up.
Edited to add: the $6500 would have happened either way. It’s the previous times that I’m happy to guilt people about.
Maybe wet a paper towel (or TP) in the lavy and take it into the stall with you?
You think, maybe?
People who cannot figure out how to wash their hands in a restroom. Please don’t reproduce.
WHY DO YOU HATE OUR FREEDOM
Yes.
Did he make sure to warn his wife not to eat the tampons? Because apparently that’s a concern.
Heh. Reminds me of the parable of the broken window:
Perhaps the parable of the flushed tampon? 
My brother is a plumber and several of his friends are plumbers and not one of them wants to pull shit-soaked bloody tampons out of your fucking pipes. It is a part of their job, true. But it is a part of the job that they really would prefer to avoid if at all possible. They like doing things like replacing your faucets, fixing your toilet, installing a new water heater - all things that (on a good day) do not involve picking bloody turd sausages out of the spring of their sewer snake.
Nobody, in any profession, likes dealing with things that are the result of human stupidity and selfishness.
I can only assume that he is a moron as well.
See the other thread. Maybe I can start a trend with my Zip-Lick bag suggestion. Or start a business selling special scented Zip-Lock bags with an anti-microbial coating as a “female hygiene product” (at ten times the price of a regular Zip-Lock bag).
Uh…wow. What happens if you live there?
And it’s not always an option. I don’t bleed an exorbitant, but get me on the first two days of my period, and when it needs to be changed, it needs to be changed. Imagine girls with really heavy periods.