This.
Do we bring up the subject here or open another thread?
I dunno bout you, but it started for me after a particularly traumatic event in Junior High.
Now, there was this time, at a concert at Mile High Stadium, where a guy led two girls into a stall in the men’s room, one of the girls sat down and he took care of his needs by aiming carefully at the remaining negative space.
There was some positive commentary on his maleness.
As Swallowed My Cellphone mentioned, it’s not specific to urinals. You can also see the same phenomena at theaters. If you were the only person in a theater, wouldn’t you feel weird if somebody came in and sat right next to you? I know I would.
It’s not that strange. Such trials are often part of a wider study into the general phenomenon of invasion of personal space.
Whether Middlemist, Knowles & Matter were ever interested in these wider issues, I cannot say. In 1976, they designed an experiment to test how the speed and flow of men’s urination in a public lavatory was affected by invasions of personal space. As part of a pilot study they stationed a guy in a urinal, pretending to groom himself in a mirror.
That researcher must have the echolocational skills of a bat.
Anyway, wishing to confirm the results of this experiment, MK&M then hid a dude in a stall with a periscope concealed in a pile of books. If anyone wants to see a photo of a periscope and a pile of books hidden in a stall, look in here. There’s also a graph of time taken to urinate (y-axis) against distance from the nearest third party urinator (x-axis).
The pilot study concluded as follows:
Also, the nearer a urinator was to a confederate, the less voluminous the persistence of flow.
Regrettably, MK&M don’t appear to have reported on the crowded urinal scenario and space selection by potential urinators, as mentioned by the OP, so while this post is somewhat off-topic, it’s not what you’d call completely piss poor.
Oredigger77 describes more accurately than I have seen anyplace else how the algorithm works.
I disagree with garygnu about the first commandment, not speaking at a urinal. Sometimes somebody next to you will say “Man, this water’s cold!”, in which case you are obligated to say “Deep, too!”
A related question:
Suppose you’re the only one at a long row of urinals. Then, mid-pee, someone steps up to use the urinal right next to yours. It’s Monty Hall. Do you switch urinals?
Yes. I go to the one where Carol Merril is standing.
If there are dividers between the urinals and I’m forced to be next to one person, I’ll use the urinal. If I would have to go between 2 or if there’s no divider I will use a stall.
some guys refuse to use the child-sized urinal. Like it makes them look like a little boy. I’m talking in an office men’s room where there is one adult-sized and one child-sized urinal and almost no chance that a little boy will come in and have to pee.
I’ve always wanted to walk into an almost-empty theater and sit down right next to someone. Just to freak them out.
The brilliant mind behind the “xkcd” comic (Randall Munroe) recently mathematically quantified the packing efficiency of urinal setups. In short, the phenomenon is alive and real.
With the urinals, it’s not all just a personal space issue. Uranals splash a bit, and I don’t want stranger pee on my shoes, nor my pee on stranger shoes.
This seems apt here: http://www.joe-ks.com/archives_nov2003/Challenge.htm
That was awesome.
Psssst! See post 19.
Doh!
I went to a concert where the women got so frustrated that they started using the men’s room. This created an instant rule that no men would use the stalls. It was a little disconcerting trying to urinate with a line of women behind me making snarky comments, but I accomplished my mission.
If I’m there to urinate, I won’t use a stall unless there are no urinals available. To do so would feel cowardly.
My only concern when using urinals is that I not fart audibly (unless someone I know is using a urinal nearby, in which case I let it rip and then look at him and say, “Well?”)
Nope, if it is crowded, I would wait.
However, if I could choose, as other pointed out, I would like to go to one where the adjacent urinals are empty or currently used by friends. If there is no such urinal, well, I just use it.
No idea why I do this, though.
But doesn’t using that one make your dick look huger?
Oh wait, no one is supposed to be looking. :smack: