I could bore you with the train of thought that led to this question, but I won’t. In short, it had to do with first on sight impressions you get of strangers in public. But discussions in the past about using other people’s bathrooms did have an effect.
To the hypothetical: A bored genie gives you the following offer:
Every morning, he’ll offer you $1000 in cash. (Interesting sub question: would you do the following for less? Like $500?)
If you take it, for that day, whenever you enter a bathroom with the intent of using the toilet or bathing, you’ll be magically teleported into a random private full home bathroom in the United States of America. It has to have both toilet and bathing capability, so no outhouses, but things like RV bathrooms do count.
Whenever you leave, you’ll end up where you started, but once the bathroom is set, you’ll enter it every time until your purpose is complete.
No one will interrupt you. You must make do with whatever toilet, shower/tub, fixtures, soap, etc. are already there in whatever condition they are. Toilet clogged? You gotta unclog it yourself or use it anyway as best you can. You can’t take anything of your own in with you except one personal towel for the sole purpose of drying off after bathing. If it isn’t already there, you do without. Yes, even toilet paper. Better wash off in the shower!
The offer becomes void forever if you ever refuse the $1000.
How long do you think you could take this arrangement? How comfortable are you with using other people’s toiletries? Do you think you could take ending up in the poverty stricken hoarder’s bathroom for the possibility of being in a billionaire’s? Am I totally off my rocker for even thinking of this? (Answer is probably.)
For me, I don’t think I could last long. The second I get put into a bathroom that’s disgusting or broken, I think I’d nope out. I’ve always been a little leery of using other people’s bathroom for bathing (e.g. as an overnight guest) unless I already know them well, and even then I’ve been unpleasantly surprised. My main issue with camping has always been bathrooms; I can barely use a public porta potty for peeing, so this situation would be intolerable for me the instant I hit a string of bad bathrooms.
I know this isn’t what you’re asking for, but when I read the thread title I saw it from the opposite side: not how long could you bear to use random other people’s bathrooms, but how likely would other random people be to allow you to use theirs?
And from that side, my guess would be “almost zero.” Just allow some rando into your house because they say they need to use a toilet? I just wouldn’t, without some connection. Like they are the close relative of some friend or, maybe, a co-worker. Otherwise at best I’d give them some toilet paper and point them to the nearby sorta scrubby/foresty town acreage.
I assume for the purposes of the hypothetical that the bathroom is magically cleaned after your use, so that the owners don’t notice anything amiss. I also assume that there are no temporal distortions: if you take 10 minutes in the bathroom, then 10 minutes passes outside of it.
“You can’t take anything of your own with you…” So you are naked except for your towel?
I live with 2 pre-teen boys. I assure you a bathroom behind them is not a place I ever wanna be. I’d get sent to places with boys in the house.
My luck just ain’t real good.
Measure for Measure: Good point that I don’t think of clothing as “something you take with you.” Let’s say you keep clothing, if only because it adds to potential consequences. No temporal distortions, and the genie doesn’t do federal withholding.
As for your last question…
colinfred: Excellent point that I just assumed that people would be decent, but if there are no consequences, the sky is indeed the limit, isn’t it? And here I thought I had this pretty well thought out.
The easiest solution would be to have the genie enforce social norms on you on pain of losing the deal, and that minor signs of you having been there are cleaned up, but not major (if you unclogged the toilet or found cleaning supplies under the sink and used them, those remain).
This sounds like a cinch to me. I can handle dirty bathrooms, and for showers and such, if they don’t have suitable hygiene products, I can use water only in those circumstances. And I think that will be rare - shampoo can serve as body wash in a pinch.
Basically, it would become my job and I would do it forever. I’ve lived all over the world and I’ve done a lot of camping. BTW: What’s to stop me from wiping my ass with the towel I travel with if there’s no paper?
$1000 a day is a lot of money. As @madmonk28 says, it’d just be my job. And, I’d be able to retire early on that money, and build my own perfect bathroom and live out my days going in style! Yeah, I’d probably see some things, but I expect the odds are pretty ok that most of the time the bathrooms would be within normal parameters for me.
A few things I’ll ask:
Why would I bother unclogging a toilet if I found it in that state? Sounds like the owner’s problem.
If a shower situation felt particularly disgusting, could I just forego my shower for the day? I mean, there are rare occasions when I might skip a shower anyway, so could I just do that? Or, would the genie know my initial intent and lock me into that bathroom option until I had used the shower?
I could keep up that deal indefinitely (or, I guess, until I reached a level of age and infirmity where I had special bathroom requirements), although I’m not sure that I would. I mean, $1,000 a day is $365,000 a year, and assuming that I get to keep my current job and this is just extra money on top of that, I would basically double my current retirement savings in two years. Which is roughly the goal I was hoping to reach before actual retirement. I’m not sure I see the point in being much greedier than that.
And yes, I would do it for less, although I’m not sure how much less. My sense is that I would still jump at $500, but might balk at $50.
I see this as a big issue. That means if I entered the bathroom to shower, once the bathroom is set, I’m using that bathroom over and over until I’m done showering. Even if the shower is vile. That’s rough. If it always changes every day, I can skip a shower or even a BM without having too big an issue. And if I can’t skip that BM, I don’t care what the toilet looks like, I’ll take my chances.
Does this include brushing teeth? I’m not sticking 365 different used toothbrushes in my mouth every year for the rest of my life just to avoid having a regular job.
I don’t shower every day; and that money would solve a lot of financial problems. If the bathroom was different each day, I’d just shower on days when the bathroom was halfway decent. And halfway decent would do.
If I could keep it up for a year or two, I could get enough set aside to last me quite a while. And I probably don’t have a huge number of years left.
Are taxes withheld? If not, how does one report “money from a genie” on one’s tax returns? (And I’d probably have to, unless the genie is doing something magical to keep the bank from asking questions. It would be impractical, not to mention suspicious, for me to suddenly start working on a cash-and-money-order-only basis. I can deposit some cash without rousing suspicions, but not that much.)
I assumed the same thing, but talking to cleaners I worked with, public female toilets are worse. Men use urinals. Women hover over the porcelain, or stand and squat on the toilet seat to avoid contact, and they block the bowls with wipes and other feminine hygiene products.
I worked only with mens toilets (which, as it happened, were always clean), so I wouldn’t know, but that’s what I was told.
When i saw the topic, i assumed this was something much more challenging. Use a random bathroom? Sure. I do that all the time. Random bathrooms when i travel, portapotties at campsites, bathrooms at friends homes. My husband’s uncle bathroom used to be challenging, because the toilet was very small and tucked in a corner, the for didn’t close properly, and the water pressure was too low. If the toilet didn’t flush the first time, it took a loooong time before i could try again. But i used it.
I don’t shower every day, so I’d probably just shower when the facilities looked okay. (My intention would always be to piss or poop, I’d just grab a shower when convenient.)
I do want to bring a toothbrush with me. That’s the one thing that gives me pause. I’m certainly not going to use someone else’s toothbrush, and I’d prefer a real brush, not just my finger or some toilet paper. But it’s a lot of money. I could probably get good at cleaning my teeth with toilet paper or my towel.
That’s not very random; it’s still selective. Completely random includes the hoarder’s house, the cabin in poorest Appalachia, the meth den’s, etc. Of course, it also includes Jeff Bezos’s and Dolly Parton’s.
As for toothbrush, don’t worry; that’s why I specified using the toilet or bathing.
Eh, I’ve used a bathroom in a hoarder’s house recently, and I’ve used bathrooms that would be at home in a cabin in poorest Appalachia. The meth den doesn’t bother me so long as the residents aren’t going to interrupt me, which is part of the hypothetical.
Most bathrooms have toilet paper. And while i try to remember to check, I’ve used my fair share of public toilets that don’t. I know how to clean up.
The toothbrush bothers me, rather more than the towel would. I’ll negotiate with the genie on that one.
I also usually use a bathroom to brush my hair and similar minor grooming, but i assume i can do that elsewhere. Maybe I can brush my teeth in my own kitchen, with my own toothbrush. Hmm.
Yeah, that’s a lot of money for a minor inconvenience. I’ll take it.
