Bless your heart. (Southerners will know what I mean).
You weren’t raised right either, apparently. Your behavior is rude and obnoxious. If you don’t need the handicap stall, don’t use it.
I look at it this way.
One, handicapped people have a special claim on handicapped stalls (barring stuff like the ONLY stall is a handicapped one, or perhaps an able bodied person for what ever reason really DOES need to use THAT stall RIGHT now or BAD things are gonna happen).
Two, able bodied people have JUST as much right to use the handicapped stall as the handicapped people.
Three, able bodied people have MORE of a claim on the handicapped stall than the handicapped.
Well, three is obviously bullshit. Which just leaves us number one and number two. So, the rights are at best equal, and at worst, the handicapped get a very slight bit of preferential treatment (while in my opinion, injuring the rights of the able bodied pretty much diddly).
In this case, I’d rather “play it safe” and give the handicapped people one slight reprieve in the general irritating grind of daily life.
Sanest post in the freaking thread.
I have public peeing anxiety… which I don’t think is an official disorder or whatever, I just get nervous peeing when someone is sitting in a stall immediately next to me (and angry if I’m already peeing and someone sits in a stall next to me, ESPECIALLY when there’s a whole line of others open), and prefer to sit in one that has an unoccupied stalls surrounding it. Meaning that the stall I usually go to is the first one against the wall, not the last (handicapped) one. But if the handicapped stall is the only one I can occupy without being right next to another stall, I use it without apology.
Maybe she was having trouble with the inserts.
Maybe ladies are different, but I use handicap-accessible stalls whenever I need a stall, and have never walked out to a grumpy centenarian waiting for my seat.
I used to use the handicapped stalls by preference because I figured, hey, why not. They’re larger and must therefore be better. Then a friend who worked as a janitor pointed out to me that because handicapped stalls are the most used, they’re also the dirtiest. Since then, I use the other ones out of pure, unadulterated self-interest and greed.
Lets go with these scenario.
There is a bathroom with only one stall. You, an able bodied person, goes in there. Somebody is in the stall. They take extra time because they are texting or chatting on the phone and are in no rush to get out so you have to wait a bit. Are you going to be pleased or a bit miffed?
Seems to me thats the same as using the handicapped stall when a non-handicapped one is available. If the handicapped person comes in while your using the only stall THEY can us, you are making them wait.
And just like in the first example, somebody is being made to wait because somebody else put their preferences first.
That’s me. I used to use the handicapped if it was available, until I read that the first one in line is the cleanest, statistically speaking. Now, I always use that one.
I’m the opposite. I figure most people are lazy so I tend to walk to the end of the row and use the last one.
And I’m not disabled so it wouldn’t occur to me to use a disabled toilet and possibly prevent someone who needed it from using it. The ‘stuff you, Jack; I’m all right’ syndrome is still alive and well, unfortunately.
I’d prefer if commuters wouldn’t use Route 128 in the mornings as it’s the ONLY exit out of my subdivision. However, they are inconsiderate and put their preference ahead of my convenience. Sometimes I am forced to sit for 3 minutes before I can exit.
Are we talking about bathrooms that have waiting lines? In which case your snark has a minor point. But its still a shitty analogy.
Or are we talking about bathrooms that are mostly empty? In which case your analogy deserves to be flushed.
This is an unfair and unreasonable parallel/comparison.
If the other stalls are full, and there are no disabled people waiting, I will use the disabled stall. I think I have done that exactly once in my life.
In all other cases they are off-limits.
If nothing else, it’s just a reasonable courtesy. Disabled people have it rough enough, don’t make things worse for them with selfish behaviour.
Clearly some of you are missing the empathy gene. Try putting yourself in the shoes of a handicap person who has no other options to pee and compare it with your personal preference to have the comfort of real estate when you pee. I suspect most of you “by-god-i’ll-pee-wherever-i-want” crowd would be the first to howl loudly if the roles were reversed.
Personally, I keep envisioning a Jerry Springer episode here.
Getting a bigger stall to piss in is a luxury for most people, for some it is a necessity.
Someone having a luxury piss should not be at the expense of denying a person a necessity piss.
The thing is, many people use the handicap stalls not because they are selfish, but because it never occurred to them that it might affect someone who really needs it. An adult might go through life never encountering such a situation. Even more so for the teens who, frankly, haven’t been around all that long. It is not done out of malice, but ignorance.
I suspect the smarter of the teens noticed you waiting when they came out, put two-and-two together, and will avoid it in the future. Likewise a polite explanation could have clued them all in.
Honestly, your OP comes off nasty. There is no reason to assume the teens are selfish, spoiled, raised poorly, or have lousy parents. I get that you were frustrated and probably just venting – if so, then no big deal. Because to think so little of strangers is too cynical and not particularly empathetic.
In any case, the thing I took away from this thread is that some people that need handicap stalls don’t appear to need them. It’s better to leave the stalls open because you cannot know if someone needs them.
The problem with this argument is that there are legitimate reasons that a non-handicapped person might wish to use the large stall. I’ve got a child, for instance, who just turned 4. For the last 18 months, since he started potty training, I’ve been bringing him in the large stall. It’s way too cramped with both of us in a small stall, and it’s too difficult to send him in a stall by himself, since he sometimes needs help managing his clothes. The extra space right now is far, far more valuable, incidentally, than it was when I had a busted arm that was strapped to my body for two months.
And for that matter, others have mentioned that the changing table is often in the handicapped stall, so even before my kids were potty trained, I was in that stall with them half the time. So…I wouldn’t use the large stall when I was by myself, and I’d always let someone in a wheelchair use that stall before I do. But if no one is around, I’ll use it without thinking twice.
As it happens, there are occasions my husband has worn a bag for incontinence (because spina bifida is such a bitch that way). You do realize those bags need to be emptied, right? And that when they’re full and the person is waiting and waiting and of course their kidneys, still being functional, are trying to fill the bag up even more the damn things can leak all over floor. Isn’t that special? Or, I suppose, he could pour it out in the same sink your wash your hands in. You would approve of that, right? But, by all means, take your time and don’t complain if you have a puddle of piss to walk through on your way out because, ohmigosh, you don’t want to be inconvenienced or use the other stalls.
Of course, if you’re so claustrophobic as to be unable to use a normal stall I suppose that would also qualify as a disability, but please don’t dawdle because someone with with a physical need might be along shortly and need it, too, and they may have much less capacity to wait than you do.