I just had a rather unpleasant auditory (never mind olfactory) experience in a public bathroom. Compounding the fact that my fellow bathroom user apparently was in some distress: the complete silence in the bathroom. Every last sound came through crystal clear, echoing off the tile walls like rolling thunder.
We put stalls up to mitigate the visual disturbance; urinal pucks and drip dispensers for odor abatement; and god knows our culture doesn’t allow for touching in the john (except for George Michael).
Why wouldn’t we have some kind of background noise to shield us from the blasting and grunting many of my colleaugues seem to need to effectively process a bowel movement? It doesn’t need to be fancy Muzak designed to speed up your pooping, or a hifi system blaring the radio.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve waited for my neighbor to flush so I can quickly “release the hounds”. However, if I have to wait too long, I’m usually forced to cough loudly to try and cover my own cacophony.
I don’t think it has to be any kind of “organized” noise, such as muzak, etc. The hum of a fan is usually enough to cover any bowel symphonies.
Well, because no one has ever walked into an empty bathroom and complained about the silence.
If you walk into a bathroom and it had no stalls - whoa, instant turn off. If you walk in and it smells royally like shit, that is horrible, too. Those things will turn off even an individual user walking into an empty bathroom which makes them…well, perhaps more necessary than other things.
Maybe a radio that turns on when more than one butt is on the can.
I would say that due to the frequent washing that room requires that you don’t want to use acustical absorbing material (because it’s usually porous). So we are left with a room with hard tile (or some equivilant). A noisy fan would help though but where do you buy a fan that is noisy on purpose?
You made a good point. I recall going into a bathroom stall feeling very ill. I noticed the black slacks and well-shined shoes which were unmistakably those of a police officer using the urinal next to the stall. Well, suffice to say the racket I was generating from purging my colon scared him off :eek:
I’ve heard some that were really noisy. However, these have almost always been in the individual-type bathrooms, rather than the ones with stalls. Curiouser and curiouser.
Actually, my old apartment had a very, very noisy fan in the bathroom. The apartments around me had very noisy fans, too. I know this because I could hear them. It was actually quite annoying. It’s one thing to turn it on so that your family doesn’t hear you taking a shit–it’s quite another to announce to all your neighbors that you are taking a shit by doing the same thing! We didn’t use it very often.
Once, one of my husband’s D&D players went into the bathroom during a game. BRRRWHIRRRRRRRRRRRCLATTERCLATTERCLATTER On goes the fan. A few of us snicker because, well, you know what that means. He may as well have announced it beforehand. Suddenly, we hear a grinding noise, a clatter, and an “OH, SHIT”! Yep, the fan fell out of the ceiling! Fortunately, it was not directly over the toilet, or we could have had some injuries. We still joke at D&D about “the vile stench” that broke the fan!
Had the maintenance man fix it–just as noisy as ever. You could ask my ex-landlord where he got his fans, but they apparently aren’t the most stable things around. Maybe that’s why commercial bathrooms don’t have noisy fans.
I see a huge market opportunity in low cost, high noise fans. We could call it “The Masker”.
I think the deluxe model could build on the incident Tamex described–if you become too loud and/or malodorous, the fan actually falls from the ceiling and attacks you.
One add-on to the topic–I have a theory that there are people who actually enjoy making as much noise as possible in the john, as if to signal to others that they are not afraid of there own sounds. This is particularly disturbing in a urinal situation–under what medical circumstance is it necessary to breathe deeply or grunt like a warthog while peeing?
Why was it snicker-worthy? Well, why else would he be going into the bathroom? Yeah, I know, you could be going in just to wash your hands. But, most of the time you know why people are using for – that’s why it’s there! Essentially, any time you go into the bathroom, you’re “announcing” your intentions.
I did have one friend, though, who had the talent of sneaking off to the bathroom without anyone noticing. It’s a rare talent though. Usually someone will see you.
Once a year when I visit my parents I remove the fan from the bathroom and clean the blades of accumulated dust and dirt. A drop or two of “3 in 1” oil on the bearings and it’s good for another year.
You, my friend, are the problem. I WANT a noisy fan. As noisy as possible. Jet-engine noisy, so I can blast away without worrying about how others interpret my anal elocution. Habitual fan-greasers like yourself expose my excremental melodies to the world.
Also, I aspire to the regularity with which you maintain others’ homes. I wouldn’t clean my crapper’s fan blades if they had a siren that went off when they were dirty.
Hey–maybe we need bathroom sirens that you can turn on when you need them, sort of like the bell the bartender rings when he gets a tip. “We have a winner!”.
Comedy musician “Weird Al” Yankovic got his first commercial break by recording his demo song “My Bolognia” (a parody of “My Sharona”) in a public restroom. He specifically cited the accoustic properties of the 'room as the reason.
(Yes, I have heard the song in question, and yes, it definitely sounds like it was recorded in a restroom)
In Japan, you can buy a device that makes the sound of a flushing toilet. The Japanese are apparently as worried as the OP about others hearing their noises of excretion. So nervous, in fact, that they were wasting millions of gallons of water just for noise-masking.
Listen, folks. Everbody’s poop smells like poop. Everybody’s pooping sounds like pooping. There is no reason to be embarassed about the way your pooping sounds and smells. Nobody should be shocked to hear somebody pooping in a public restroom. That’s the right place for it.
