I don’t hear it as much as I used to, but you’re not supposed to hang stuff on the inside hooks because thieves reach over the top of the door and snatch purchases/belongings. While you’re seated and unclean. I have seen hooks placed halfway down the door, but not often. Possible impalement threat?
How do people manage airport toilets? When I’m traveling with my gf, one of use runs to the bathroom while the other guards carry-ons, then we swap places.
Traveling solo I just deal with it. My carry-on is a backpack, which helps considerably.
If I have to use the washroom or even if I realized I’ve forgotten to buy something after checking out, I ask a store employee if it’s ok to leave my cart with them for a minute. They’ve always been willing.
Let’s say you got to the shopping district by subway, so no car. You’ve got some bags from having visited stores already. You go into the next store, you see the restroom, you need to pee, there is no customer service desk in sight. You take your bags into the restroom, there are no hooks on the stall doors.
Well, what’s the problem with setting the bags on the floor? Unless one of your bags is paper and you set it in a puddle (you should be able to avoid this, right?), the restroom germs will stay on the outside of the bag, and your purchases will stay on the inside.
On the train ride back to car or home (as the case may be), you’ll probably hold your bags by the handles, with the bags sitting on the floor. If you’re worried about bringing the germs into your car (or home), then take your purchases out of your bags, put them in the trunk of your car (or just inside your door) while keeping the bags themselves outside. Then throw the bags away.
Do the deed one handed, my man.
I’m kind of wondering what people who are paranoid about this do about their shoes. You get the restroom floor (and sidewalk) greeblies on the soles, and then later track them into your car, and unless you disinfect them before entering all around your home. Are you careful never to touch the soles of your shoes, or any surface that has touched the soles of your shoes? And toilet plumes create aerosols that deliver fecal matter and bacteria to the air and deposit it on all exposed surfaces.
I recall a thread by someone who was grossed out by the idea of drinking a cup of coffee in a restroom on the grounds that germs might leap from the air into the cup, without considering that he was breathing the same air that the germs were floating in.
I’m with the folks looking at this as a “you” problem and not a bathroom problem. Every time those toilets flush, atomized pee-water is flung all over the place in the bathroom. Same with in the stalls. While I am not about to lick the bathroom floor, neither am I concerned about setting my bags down on them (I don’t lick the bottom of my bags, reusable or otherwise, either). The few germs that might make their way to those bags are the same germs that are on the soles of your shoes, but I bet you don’t put on latex gloves to take your shoes off.
In Japan, I saw quite a few public toilets with shelf space built into the wall behind the urinals and toilets. Room enough for a briefcase or a couple of shopping bags, and at about chest/head height for most people.
Retrofitting every bathroom in North America is probably cost-prohibitive, alas.
Good bathrooms have stalls with hooks. Bad bathrooms don’t. This isn’t just a shopping issue, I can’t take a dump with a long coat on in the winter.
That said, public bathrooms aren’t all that gross. Except for when they are. But some people think all public bathrooms are filthy by definition and I assure you your kitchen sink is almost certainly worse. If I really thought a public restroom was too nasty to set my bags down on a dry spot on the floor, I wouldn’t use it to begin with.
Of course, I’ve encountered that attitude as well and I don’t understand it. When I worked at McDonald’s I knew a guy who lived nearby and he would go home any time he needed to use the bathroom.
Paulie on the Sopranos
If you’re in the middle of Luzern there are lockers at the train station for baggage. We’ve used them to drop stuff off, as we needed to buy something and then wanted to go hiking. We just pick up our stuff on the way back home.
Madrid train station, also has a place to store luggage at the train station. Due to recent terrorist activity they scan all luggage before allowing the luggage to be stored in the lockers.
Yeah – but you have to remember that I would also probably meet some near-stranger who slept in his car in a park somewhere, take him to my gun club, and hand him one of my firearms. I’m just a trusting soul like that. 
You are right though but I have done as I’ve said a few times I’ve had to; for me it works.
So, you’re in the supermarket with an armful of bags full of groceries and need to pee. At least there’s a proper place nearby to do so, if only you can figure out the logistics.
Hey, what if you’re in a place where you really can’t get to a convenient place to pee, not even behind a tree or a shrub, and you’re stuck there for three or four or five hours?
I’m thinking, like, in a small single-seat aircraft, flying cross country on a multi-hour flight. And you’ve been carefully taught to bring water along and drink plentifully lest you become dehydrated, which is a really bad thing to have happen. Now what do you do when you have to pee in mid-flight?
Spoilered because some would find this TMI :eek:
[spoiler]
Well, there are several options, all of which take some planning ahead.
One choice is to wear a disposable adult diaper. This has been my choice on several occasions. It turned out, my longest flights were about 2 1/2 hours and I didn’t need to pee. (OTOH, on a 1-hour flight, all three of us aboard nearly wet our pants needing to pee, but we made it to an airport in the nick of time, jumped out, and did our business right there in the dirt by the side of the runway. :smack: )
Then there’s the condom catheter (see the section on usage by aircraft pilots). This connects to a tube which connects to a bag strapped to the pilot’s leg, or else it goes out a hole in the bottom of the aircraft. I’ve read that there are versions of this device suitable for female pilots to use too.
But guess what. Up there at high altitudes it gets cold. This can lead to unexpected problems. I quote from an e-mail newsletter I got just three days ago:
[/spoiler]So plan ahead! Set yourself up with your own pee tube before you head out shopping! Too help you get started, here is some detailed advice on how to outfit yourself and your glider with a pee tube. I’m sure this works every bit a well for outfitting your shopping cart too. Be prepared! ETA: And be careful in cold weather!