Scenario: You are a male who typically urinates standing up. You need to urinate. You walk into the mens restroom/bathroom/loo and observe that all of the urinals are occupied, but that the toilet stalls are not.
Opting to make use of the stall, you enter and go about your business.
Do you close the door to the stall, or leave it open behind you?
If you close it, why? When you are at a urinal, you have no door behind you while you are standing there (at least, in 99% of the restrooms).
If you don’t close it, why? There is an expectation that you are occupying a stall, so you should close the door to indicate it is not open to others.
After the first time somebody came charging into the stall without realizing I was there and bumped into me, resulting in a truly awkward mess, I have chosen to always close the stall door when I’m in it.
Urinals have not so much of an issue because you can see people using them from far enough away to not run into them.
I think I usually close it, but not always. I think it’s just a part of conforming to what people expect. If they see an open door, they might bust in, drunk or oblivious in some other way.
Generally I close it, but I attribute that to pure habit more so than “omg I need my privacy”. Although if I don’t close it I never feel anything different in terms of nerves or something.
Although now that I’m thinking of it I rarely, if ever, close it at a bar.
I tend to leave it open so the next guy who comes in will realize I’ll be done quickly in case he has a screaming case of the shits. Unless it’s a handicapped stall, where the door tends to close on its own. In that case, I close it and lock it to avoid the situation** Ethilrist **described.
I sit down in public toilet stalls, on the grounds that spraying piss all over my own bathroom is my god-given right, but inaccuracy in a public toilet should be discouraged.
Privacy, and this. But even then, you occasionally get some jackass who tries to force the door, or pounds on it mercilessly. This has even happened during #2. I’m no expert, but I think parsimony suggests that locked door = occupied, and it doesn’t = guy locked the door then crawled under the partition for the hell of it.
I used to wonder why so many stall doors opened inward, and hated it because it made getting in and out awkward. Now I know why they’re good: so you can brace your foot against the door when someone won’t take a locked door for “go away.”
Public poll! Public poll! Public poll! Public poll! Public poll! Coward!
FTR, just leave it open for myself. I don’t mean to satisfy the gratification I get from the chance others with dangling bits (pace Britney Spears) might get from seeing my enormous wang, but that I never care to shut the door.
Have been known to lean back against a closed door (while inside the stall, and alone, mind you!) and think of England when I have some problems relieving myself. Relaxation and all that, what?
Ah, the classic “too drunk to care” option. It’s allowed.
The weirdest thing is when you see adult males with no apparent cognitive defects pee by pulling their pants down to their ankles. It’s rare but unnerving. They always like to be out in the open.
Urinals are closer to crotch height and the shape is designed for quiet laminar flow. Toilets are not, and depending on the shape may require directing the stream into the standing water for splash avoidance. So I close the door to make things a bit quieter.
I close the door since that time I got whacked in the back pretty hard by the door when some goober just slammed it open, assuming no one was in the stall.