My office has two single stall bathrooms that must, under penalty of law, be labelled MEN and WOMEN. It annoys me no end to see someone waiting when one bathroom is being used and the other one is empty.
At the college I attended, one of the dorms had recently been converted from a women’s residence to men’s quarters. The bathrooms, however, had not been overhauled. The toilets were all of the sit-down variety, and there were still tampon dispensers on the walls.
Back in the 1950’s, my mother committed a restroom faux pas when she took a train from Cleveland (her home town) to New Orleans. She saw the sign that said “Women”, but failed to notice the additional word “Colored”. Mom (well, I wasn’t born yet, so she technically wasn’t yet “mom”, but whatever) had certainly heard of Jim Crow segregation, but had not lived it as a day-to-day reality. As she tells the story, there was one black woman using the facilities, and “the lady just smiled when she realized how embarrassed I looked.”
Had the incident happened a few years later, Mom might have been arrested for being “one of them Yankees come down here to cause trouble”, and her protestations of innocence might well have fallen on deaf ears, especially if the authorities had investigated her background and learned that her father (still very much alive at the time) was quite the activist in matters of civil and other social rights.
It’s also not completely unheard of for men’s rooms to lack doors on the stalls. In my experiance this most often occurs at county fairs, more “rustic” campgrounds, and schools.
There was a men’s dorm when I was in college that had NO guest bathroom for females, and ALL the bathroom stalls were sans doors. It was just awful using a bathroom there, even with a guy standing guard outside; us females are used to more bathroom privacy. (The dorm I lived in had been converted from a men’s dorm, and still had gang showers, but that was easier to deal with, for some reason.) And I ended up with that predicament quite a bit, as the guys who threw the best parties lived up on the 4th floor of Noah in this HUGE room with a spectacular oval window large enough and with a deep enough sill to sit in. Which was particularly fun when the parties involved recreational chemistry. 
Can happen to anyone. I walked into the women’s room at Hollywood Bowl one day. The tipoff was the looooong line of stalls. And, of course, the women standing at the mirrors fixing their makeup.
It brings to mind two episodes I’ve had. Years ago I rushed to a bathroom door without looking fully, jerked the door open and saw a woman standing at a sink with a surprised expression on her face. I let out a little scream and jumped back quickly heading to the proper door.
The worse case was a few years ago while on a trip in rural Ontario. While out for a walk I developed the need to use the bathroom. By the time we got back to the car I was very uncomfortable and walked gingerly over to a nearby gas station/restaurant trying not to crap my pants. In my haste and concentration I did not notice the sign on the door although I thought I saw the area for the urinal out of the corner of my eye as I headed for a stall, I was wrong. While sitting there some other people came in and one was in the stall next to me. Like Hampshire, I thought the guy was wearing some pretty effeminate looking sandals. When the other people started talking it sunk in that I must be in the women’s bathroom. I just about wanted to flush myself down the toilet to get away. I pulled my feet together to hide my own shoes as best as I could, waited for the people to leave and managed to get out before anyone else came in.
Heh, well you all might appreciate this little nugget.
Near my home town, in Pensacola, Florida there is a restaurant/pub named McGuire’s. It is a nice place, not at all formal and has some pretty fine grub. The ceilings are festooned (I always wanted to use that word in a sentence) with dollar bills, they have their own micro brewery, etc.
They also have a pretty good sense of humor. On the restroom doors are big signs saying “MEN” and “WOMEN.” Only, under these signs is a teeny, tiny, arrow pointing to the other door.
I’ve done this twice. The first time was at a swim meet that lasted the weekend. So I was used to going into the locker room from the pool. My parents came once and I went to see them. When I came back I was so used to turning left I did and walked right into the women’s locker room.
The other time I was in the middle of Pennsylvania in the middle of the night and had to take a crap. I stopped at a gas station and the men’s room was closed. I thought, there’s no one around why not just go in the women’s bathroom. After I had already started going someone else walked in and used the stall next to me. I’m just glad that I used the stall with the door as the other one didn’t have a door.
Seeing our locations, It may very well have been me - Although I seem to recall the woman giving me the funny look was a small Asian girl. I was…a little drunk at the time. IIRC the setup in Haskayne is that on the male and female facilities are located at opposite ends of the building…which in turn alternate depending on which floor you’re on.
Oh well, now I know what they look like on the inside, so won’t make that mistake next time.
The trough: The Urinals of Tiger Stadium
And a thread on urinal history: No more "showers for midgets." When? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board
Hmm, that doesn’t look like the trough he described. That looks like a urinal that got stretched out. He told me there were “troughs” down on the floor level with water running through them like a stream. I suggested that it might be nice to plant some water grass for decoration and he did this –> :rolleyes:
I’ve been there.
It really is pretty tricky (and I hadn’t even had any alcoholic beverages) but I managed to go to the right place.
I do not really consider myself all that daring or anti-social but I, a woman, have been using the gents’ rooms for years. I am discreet but determined.
I simply hate those ridiculous lines at the ladies.’
I saw my first trough not long ago.
It really did kind of take my breath away, but I can see the practicality.
Years and years ago I was driving a motorcycle in Kyushu, southern Japan, when I got some junk on my hard contacts and suddenly could barely see. There was a department store close by, so I zip over there and head for the rest room. Squinting, I try to discriminate between the rooms, and I go in what I thought was the men’s room.
Pink. Strange. But here’s a urinal, so I must be OK, I figure and I wash out the contact. I finish just as a woman comes in and looks completely surprised to see a foreign man walking out. That’s when found out that at this department store, at least, they have a child’s urinal in the women’s room so that little boys can go with their mothers.
Ok. Closer: http://www.michaelylee.com/photos/taiwan_hongkong/Day_02/piss.jpg
http://www.roblambert.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/wrigley-field-urinal-trough.jpg
Yes, that’s it! (He just verified.) Now, wouldn’t that just be darling with some papyrus in the corner, and maybe some cattails growing along the back? If we put some lotus pads down the center, y’all would have targets! 
In grade school, I had been pushed into the girls bathroom against my will. As I recall, I changed into a girl and stayed like that for three weeks.
Sorry, this happened at the U of S way back in the 80’s. Like most Calgarians, I’m from away.
Charger, I was wondering why there is so much fuss about guys accidentally using the ladies’ room. We’re all discreetly sitting in private stalls; I would think the women accidentally using the men’s room would be worse, with all those penissesses hanging out everywhere. Now I understand.
Senior year the upper-level French classes got to go to Quebec. In Montreal we got to tour a secondary school. While we where in the gym complex one of the girls needed to use the bathroom. She went in the wrong door and into the boys’ lockerroom, during a swiming class. She made it to a stall before anyone came in, by the time she finished and left the stall class was over and she came face-to-face with several dozen naked teenage boys. Both our teachers and theirs thought it was hilarious.
The real question is, did she know about shrinkage?
I used to live in a dorm that was the exact opposite. Cowden Hall, at NAU, is a co-ed hall and used to be divided pretty much half and half, but some administrative shuffling (and the fact that for some reason, parents are way more enthusiastic about getting their daughters locked away in a single-sex wing than their sons) resulted in the third floor being all female. The bathroom in my wing still had the urinals in it; I remember one Halloween, I saw a pair of girls in 1930s gangster-style drag having their friend take pictures of them “using” the urinal.
The only bathrooms with actual baths in them are also in the ladies’ wings. I can’t decide whether they’re all organized that way because the urinals take up too much room to fit the tubs in the mens’ rooms, or because the dorms were built in the 1960s by an obliviously sexist architect.
I occasionally use the mens’ room at places like restaurants, where each restroom is a small room with a single toilet and sink in it, but you won’t catch me using the mens’ room in a dorm. The smell of socks and jockstrap are enough to keep me out of the wing outright, much less the bathrooms. 