Public Bathrooms

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Using public bathrooms are a pet peeve of mine. I actually have quite a few, but this one is on my mind the most because I have to deal with it more often than any other.

Why don’t I like them? I have any number of reasons. A bathroom, in my mind, should be a place of solitude and contemplation. Someplace private and protected, a place where you can do a somewhat filthy business alone and unobserved, in such a manner that it’s almost possible to believe nobody else does it at all. Like, if you never see anybody do it, you can suspend the belief that everybody has to suffer the indignity of taking a crap every now and then. You never think about celebrities in the bathroom, right? Because you don’t, you never have to confront the reality that yes, these are people too, and they probably excrete shit on a daily basis.

Why does it matter to pretend that people don’t use the bathroom? That’s easy – anything related to our bodies or body functions is taboo in our society. Think of our swear words, the really bad ones you got in trouble for as a kid. Here’s a brief list, in alphabetical order:

Asshole.

Cockmunch.

Cunt.

Dickface.

Piss.

Shit.

Taboo things aren’t talked about - we aren’t comfortable doing it. It’s been ingrained into our society, probably since Victorian times, that anything related to what our bodies do is bad, and that we should all just pretend that we don’t do them. We can’t help it; we’re just a product of our surroundings. A parallel example that will enable you to understand this concept is French Quebecers. For them, the taboo subject was religion – throughout most of recent history, for hundreds of years, their society was ruled with an iron fist by the Catholic Church. You didn’t dare do anything that the Church thought was a sin, or else you’d go straight to hell. So they ended up having swear words like these:

Calisse. (Chalice)

Tabernac. (Tabernacle)

Sacrement. (Sacrement)

These are all things related to a church. They don’t sound very bad, do they? Sacrement? In English, this is probably a good word, but as I understand it, this one is one of the Baddest of the Bad swear words in French. And it works the other way too, of course – English swear words don’t mean anything at all to French Quebecers. They just aren't taboo. For instance, I was watching “The Big Lebowski” with my Quebecer girlfriend one time, and she got a kick out of imitating the actors:

“What da fuck is going on?”

“Donnie, shut da fuck up!”

“What da fuck?”

She laughed hysterically when she quoted these lines, because these sound like baby words to her. Me, I’d known her for months as this refined, ladylike and modern woman – so it was shocking (I wasn’t insulted or anything – it was just weird as hell) hearing her talking like a sailor on shore leave with obvious enjoyment.

So because being in a public bathroom necessarily exposes us to these taboos, they can be uncomfortable places. They are to me, at least.

It's possible to trace the line back even earlier than recent history, though. Have you ever watched a dog doing its business? What about a cat in its litter box? Think about what their faces and body language express: they look uncomfortable. Sure, there’s a certain amount of anthropomorphism that goes on with people and their pets, but really, there is no mistaking the expression on a dog’s face when it’s taking a shit: it feels vulnerable, and it doesn’t like it. My cat, when she’s in her box, she’ll perch there stoically over the little hole she dug, desperately pretending you aren’t there. You can poke her repeatedly and she won’t do a thing until she’s finished. She knows she’s trapped, and her face betrays a total loathing for the duration of the experience.

Think about cavemen, back in the day. For the majority of your daily routine, you were out in the woods or in the savannah somewhere. If you had to pinch off a loaf, that probably meant that you had to lift your furs and put down whatever weapon you were carrying. It left you in an exquisitely vulnerable and delicate situation, ripe for attack by another caveman, competing for the same scarce resources you were. Wouldn't you want to be able to do what you had to in total solitude? The instinct to feel discomfort when you are moving your bowels therefore must extend back many thousands of years. It’s only been recently that we’ve been able to perform these necessary functions in complete safety – imagine the novelty the first time it was possible to read a book, subconsciously secure in the knowledge that you wouldn’t be clubbed from behind for your sack of mammoth meat. And why else do we feel so relieved when it’s all finished? It’s because the threat of danger is over.

Public restrooms arouse all those nervous, instinctive feelings in me. Most particularly, my office restroom, the one I’m forced to use the most often. For some reason, using a bathroom at a bar or arena never bothers me – maybe it’s the knowledge that I’ll never see the other occupants again in my lifetime. Or maybe I’m just drunk. Either way, I can use the facilities in those instances without inhibition.

By the way, I’m certain this isn’t a unique phenomenon, these feelings of discomfort. In fact, I think the majority of men dislike using public bathrooms. How can I be sure of that? Easy, I’ll show you:

The Urinal Situation # 1

A man walks into a bathroom with 3 urinals. They are all unoccupied. Which one does he take? That’s right – the one that’s furthest away. Statistics have shown that the urinal (or toilet stall, for that matter) used the most often is the one furthest from the door. Keep that in mind if you’re one of those types that worries about a clean public toilet – the cleanest one will be the one closest to the door, because it’s used the least. The reason for the selection of urinal/toilet stall? Because of the instinctive need for privacy.

The Urinal Situation # 2

A man walks into a bathroom with 3 urinals. The one furthest from the door is occupied. Which one does he take? Of course; it’s the urinal furthest from the one currently in use. The man’s instinctive need to be away from other competitors kicks in, and he relieves himself at a discreet distance.

You’ve probably noticed I’m talking about men only here – there’s a good reason for that. First, I’m a man, and I can only relate bathroom behaviour I have personally observed. Secondly though, a simple observation of women outside the bathroom proves that women don’t feel the same way about bathrooms as men. The old joke about women going to the bathroom together exists for a reason – because they do it. They like to. Every time I walk past the ladies restroom at work, I can hear women chatting away in there, or amazingly, the sound of a hairdryer humming away overtop a conversation. When you’re at a bar or restaurant, ladies go to the bathroom together – and talk to each other while in the stalls! Needless to say, this rarely, if ever, happens in a man’s bathroom. Go to a bar on a Friday night, and enter the man's bathroom, and what you’ll find is stony silence, with rows of men using the urinals in funeral stillness, as the muffled beat of dance music thumps through the concrete walls. So why do women blow my theory?

The thing is though, they don’t. Back to our caveman example, and we can see why. Thousands of years ago, the primary role of women was child-rearing. Men were the fighters, the protectors, the hunter-gatherers, diligently roaming the woods and fields for food and supplies for his family. This meant that the camp was probably left mostly unguarded. So what do you do when you feel threatened, are vulnerable, and have to make water in the bushes? You stick together. Interactions of all types become a group activity for our ancestral women out of the need for safety, so they evolved with the instinctive need to relieve themselves with others for the greater protection that a group of women could afford. It’s not a crazy idea at all. Look at herds of antelopes, or lion prides; the females all hang out together to protect the young and enhance the overall security level of the social group. Is it so hard to imagine these instincts remaining programmed in humans today? It’s very reasonable to make that comparison. Other kinds of animal behaviour is clearly still exhibited by modern humans, so why not this?

At my workplace, the way the bathroom has been constructed, it’s almost like it’s been done in such a way as to make it as uncomfortable an experience as it can be, in order to violate all those imbedded instincts as thoroughly as possible. Consider these sensations:

The Sights

The urinals are squeezed, side-by-side, in one corner of the bathroom. No divider is between them, and they are right beside the sink. It is impossible to wash your hands or look in the mirror without seeing some guy in stark, florescent clarity standing against the urinal three feet away.

The Sounds

Many bathrooms have music piped in to obscure the sounds we make. This would be great, but we don’t have it where I work. Everything is conducted in library silence, and every single squelch, cough, or splash can be heard by everyone in there (and outside too, actually - an anonymous suggestion was put forth by my colleagues to install a sound baffle outside the man's bathroom, something that was discussed with some hysteria at a team meeting). I’d definitely accept a ventilation fan for some background white noise, but even this basic accessory is not included in my office bathroom. Which leads us nicely to…

The Smells

If any of my colleagues happen to be struck with a diarrhea attack (it’s happened – you spend the rest of your day wondering, “was that the guy?”), the smell lingers inside the bathroom literally for hours. Not to mention any other, but no less unpleasant odours that might be produced within. A guy I used to work with had this incredibly potent body odour – the rancid stench would stay in the bathroom the entire day, every day.

The Touch

Like I said before, the urinals are squeezed so close, that should you be unfortunate enough to need to use one, there will be elbow contact with your neighbour. It’s unavoidable. Why is this bad? It just makes me feel like a homo, and I want to avoid that sensation.

The Tastes

Thank goodness there are none of these – although I’ve seen empty candy wrappers, coffee cups, and glasses in there at any given time. WHY does anyone feel the need to bring food into the bathroom? Can’t it wait a couple of minutes? It must be the caveman instinct kicking in again: guard the nourishment at all times. Try not to think about the statistic about how few people wash their hands after they take a leak.

So as a consequence of this assault of the senses, I am forced to interact with colleagues in the bathroom every now and then. Something I’ve gotten into the habit of doing is using the bathroom only when it’s empty; if I go in and see some guy at a urinal, or a pair of feet in a stall, I just head back to my office for a few minutes. I can wait.

[As an aside, why are bathroom stalls made so you can see the feet of the occupant? Or are open at the top? Current stall construction seems like a really half-assed (pun not intended) solution to create a concession to privacy. That is, if you’re going to put walls up between the toilets – why don’t they extend all the way to the floors and ceilings? I would love a bathroom made this way. As they are made now, there might as well be nothing there at all if you can see the lower half of the person in there. I was actually in a bathroom once where the walls of the stalls were mounted high enough that you could actually see the ass of whoever was sitting on the toilet. The workers had to be either drunk or retarded not to notice that error. But I digress.]

But sometimes, no matter how carefully I plan my bathroom visits, I am forced to interact with other users, who don’t seem to share my feelings about bathrooms. Some of them act in a distinctly anti-social manner while in the bathroom; anti-social in this case meaning, ignoring all normal rules and etiquette you’d expect from a fellow male in the can. These are examples of people I work with who I have encountered in the bathroom. You might have seen versions of them wherever you work, too:

The Mumbler

This man, regardless of whether he is in a stall or at a urinal station, mutters to himself. The mutters usually seem profane and hostile. I’ve entered the bathroom before to hear him cursing to himself, only to suddenly stop talking, knowing that someone might be listening. I’ve also been sitting quietly in a stall, minding my own business, and heard him come in – he immediately began muttering angrily until he noticed my feet in the stall, at which point he silenced himself. There’s really nothing here that goes against the understood rules of public bathroom use, I just think it’s weird.

The Talker

This guy, regardless of whether or not he or you is using a urinal or a stall, will strike up a conversation with you. Every office probably has a guy like this. He’s also impossible to pass in the hallway without getting caught up in his web of conversation. If I see him coming outside the bathroom, already beginning to smile with happiness at the chance to talk to me, I quicken my pace and look at my watch, as though I’m in a hurry to get somewhere. It rarely works. The Talker is ignorantly oblivious to any kind of body language.

The Reader

As I explained before, I’ve tried to plan my bathroom visits to be as solitary and as brief as possible. The Reader ruins this strategy, because he is always in there, at any time of day. He’s only predictable early on – the first thing he does every morning is use the bathroom, always in the stall I think of obscurely as “mine.” I know he reads in there because I’ll hear the rustle of newspapers, and if I happen to go in there after he’s used it, they are always lying on the floor in little bunches, reminding me somehow of a hamster nest. I always know The Reader must be in there, because he wears these stupid-looking white sneakers. Other than recognizing his shoes, I’ve made no effort to know his identity outside the bathroom. What happens in the bathroom, stays in the bathroom.

The Moaner

Amazingly, on multiple occasions, I have been in the bathroom and heard this man groaning in a stall. He is well aware that I (and others) are in the bathroom, but he holds nothing back. Unfortunately, I have been unable to shield myself from knowing his identity. So I end up worried that I’m going to be traumatized by another moaning episode every time I see him. I’ve coughed loudly in order to alert him that I’m in there, or even struck up a conversation with another occupant at a urinal (a big taboo, something I normally never do) in order to try and convince The Moaner to quiet down until we leave. It never works:

The Moaner, inside his stall: Uhhhnnnn! Uhhhnnnn!
Me: (loudly) Ahem! Say, did you see that goal last night?
Urinal User: (staring manfully and correctly at the wall) Yeah, I saw it on the highlights this morning.
The Moaner: Aaaahhh! Uhnnnn!
Me: Well, goodbye now.

This sounds horrible, until you learn about…

The Talking Strainer

Amazingly, this person breaks all the conventions of public bathroom use. He is willing to talk to other men while he is in a stall, which is bad enough, but does it when he is actually struggling to move his bowels:

Talking Strainer: Hey…so (now straining) how was your weekend? *grunt*
Me: Oh my god.
Talking Strainer: Huh? (hideously straining again) Did something happen?
Me: …

Maybe this will help you understand why I mostly use the bathroom 16 floors below my office; always blessedly solitary, with music AND a ventilation fan to conceal things I’d rather not know about.