I used to work for a theater in Los Angeles…let me tell you, the women’s toilet was always a disaster. Absolute slobs…they never flushed, the sink was filthy and they would toss paper towels on the floor.
However, the one time a woman tried to do something nice forced us call 911!
It seems a pregnant woman got sick during the show, threw up all over the bathroom floor, and decided to clean it up…she took hand soap and washed the floor and threw some water on it…well, not only did it stink to highheaven, it turned the floor into a skating rink. At intermission, women were dropping like flies…falling hard and fast. The combination of sticky soap and water was not good. Hence the 911 calls. One woman actually broke an arm.
Still, the men’s restroom was never a problem…but at the end of the night, nobody ever wanted to go in to check the women’s restroom.
I will admit, a lot of Californians, including ex-Californians like myself, still believe in the adage, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow…” as a water conservation matter. In our Gay household, we don’t flush when the water is just yellow…and let’s leave the topic at that.
I concur. My first ever job was cleaning college dormitories.
When it came to restrooms,the mens’ wasn’t exactly pristine. The womens’ was absolutely frightful. Tampons, urine, poop, you name it, I cleaned it.
Sometimes I think some women are the ‘secret slob’ that Holden Caulfield described in Catcher in the Rye. So perfect for the outside world, but maintaining some very gross personal habits when there is nobody looking.
So far, besides the flushing issue, people have been pretty respectful of our bathroom. I don’t have any horror stories . . . Yet.
I think it’s because we keep the bathroom so nice. It still smells new, and sparkles with cleanliness. Every day, one of us goes in and disinfects the place from top to bottom. As public-bathroom-phobic as I am, I have no qualms about using it.
If I could get 'em to flush, everything would be great.
When Mr. Armadillo was a young pup in high school, he worked at Busch Gardens as a summer job, picking up garbage and cleaning bathrooms. He has told me on a couple different occasions that the mens’ room was never anywhere close to as dirty as the cesspool of filth that was the womens’ room. I don’t get it. Especially the spraying all over the seat thing. I mean, really, if you don’t want your butt touching the seat, knowing that so many have hovered and sprayed before you, couldn’t you at least get a wad of seat-cover or toilet paper and wipe off your sprayed urine after you’re through?
I have a big problem using highway rest areas because of this. I’m not public restroom phobic, but I do tend to draw the line at mopping up someone else’s urine before using the facilities myself. I can hold it a long time.
If the bathroom is already dirty, it seems to encourage people to add their own filth. It makes them more careless.
As an experiment, one day I didn’t pick up a wad of paper towel that someone had dropped on the floor beside the trash can. Sure enough, by the end of the day, there were several other wads dropped to keep it company.
After I picked it up, everyone went back to using the trash can.
I’m hoping that a clean bathroom encourages people to be tidy in their habits. As I said, other than the not-flushing issue, so far my theory has held up to experiment.
What about when you go into a stall and see what looks like WWIII in a toilet? Yes, I’m talking about people who have some kind of a fetish with Chernobyl or something, and leave what looks like explosive diarrhea and don’t flush. The kind where the toilet is practically cover in feces. I can understand the fact the toilets break from time to time, but what is the deal here? I’m not talking about some public bathroom and Six Flags Great America, which is where I’d expect something like this. I’m talking about a company that employs 40,000+ professionals. And people do this? And what about that nasty women who wipes her ass with the guest towels? Eewww.
Lissa, I don’t mean that the toilets themselves are an issue. I mean… umm… that maybe these patrons’ “output” was more than one flush could handle. Maybe they tried once and it didn’t all go down, so they just gave up and left.
Now, me, I’d stay there till the %% stuff went down. I’d be embarrassed to leave it, quite frankly. Besides, what if I left it and someone saw me leave?
I can understand all this public restroom carelessness, but where does my roommate get off not flushing? Argh. And considering our bathroom is miniscule, the least she could do is lower the lid so I don’t walk into a concentrated-piss-reeking airlock. (cry)
Could be small children who don’t know to flush after themselves. I flushed a loo in a hotel en suite once, heard the water gush, and lifted the lid to check I hadn’t left a floater (I have cleaned more loos in more jobs than I care to mention!) and discovered that not one thing had flushed out of the bowl …
I’ve lost count of the times I’ve used a loo somewhere and when I tried to flush it wouldn’t as the tank was empty, or the ballcock was broken and it was taking forever to re-fill, sometimes people don’t want to wait…
and don’t get me started about women’s loos!! Jaysus, do you throw used sanitary items on the floor of your bathroom at home???
Check out “A Focus Theory of Normative Conduct: Recycling the Concept of Norms to Reduce Littering in Public Places,” by Ciladini, Reno, and Kallgren, 1990. They used trash in parking garages, but they found exactly the effect you are describing.
Huh. Waddaya know. Maybe I should have been a sociologist after all. I could be getting paid for my little “experiments,” but to tell you the truth, the fun I have in running them is pay enough.
They also found some results that seem to suggest it might actually help to put up signs that say “Please Flush.” I always used to make fun of the ones we had in my high school because I figured, people are gonna do what they’re gonna do. But apparently, just reading it will make the difference for some folks.
And that doesn’t bode well for this area, because the parks commission in Montgomery County, Maryland, has decreed that all trash cans will be removed from all parks (save two or three) this month. People instead will bring out whatever they bring in; the theory is that this will save government workers from having to empty trash cans that don’t have too much in them. My theory is that the parks will now have trash all over the place.
I struck the worst ever floater in my own house today. The child made a LOG and then had the audacity to ask if it was mine! Believe me if I had crapped something that big I would remember!
This was a floater in truest sense of the word. 12 times it was flushed and stayed there grinning. Finally I ordered the child to attack it with a loo brush. I didn’t listen to the “oh you are sooooooo mean mum” calls. I really needed a wee and there was no way I was going anywhere near that thing.
I still feel amazed that somone could crap something that huge and flush resistant. I’m even more amazed knowing we eat the same things and my poop goes first time everytime.
I beg to differ. We have a urinal non-flusher at work and it disgusts me every time. Once my “contribution” stirs up the old stuff, the smell is just nasty.
At an old, old job I had to clean restrooms, and I will attest to the ladies vs mens room difference. The mens room required a mop and paper towels. The womens room often required level III hazmat gear.