Bathrooms confuse me.

bastomatic wrote: In reply to GameboyRMH:

Is there something I can eat to help that?

Hey I've just thought of a solution to the lack of soundproof stalls in the women's bathroom, inside we'll place a rack on the wall with a bunch of these:

Furious_E wrote:

Cooper_Tired wrote:

Spoolpigeon wrote: In reply to Fueled by Caffeine: Me. We only have one stall and I work with a bunch of pigs that can't pee in a toilet without peeing all over the place. At least they have the paper ass gaskets there for a small amount of peace of mind.

This. Ass gaskets are a must. A previous employer used to keep cans of spray Lysol stocked in every stall. Which was great because we worked with some serious swamp creatures

In response to complaints about the cleanliness of the restrooms, my employer started stocking Lysol wipes in the stall for a period of time. The intention was to use the wipe to clean the seat before you sit down. One particular individual apparently misunderstood the intent, which was NOT to provide everyone with a free anal bleaching service . Poor guy was walking around like a cowboy from an old western film all day.

Thanks for that, now I have to explain to my co-workers just what in the hell was so funny.

Also, if Lysol wipes appeared in our bathroom today, I'd take bets on about 25% of our guys here using those wipes in the same fashion at least once.

Tactical Penguin wrote: Also, if Lysol wipes appeared in our bathroom today, I'd take bets on about 25% of our guys here using those wipes in the same fashion at least once.

"Don't get it on your hootus" seems like good advice here...

In the 70's Pratt and Whitney had no doors on the stalls of the bathrooms in the mens room in East Hartford. Supervisors used to take sweeps through to ensure no one was sleeping.

GameboyRMH wrote:

bastomatic wrote: In reply to GameboyRMH:

The bathroom has an air-freshener-spray machine and like I said, it still takes hours. Someone seems to be dialing it up over time to try to give it an advantage, it's been on a sickeningly high setting for the last couple of days, the extreme amount of freshener scent is almost as bad now. It's becoming the monster to beat the monster.

Poo-Pourri is not your typical air-freshener. You spray it on the toilet bowl BEFORE the E36 M3 hits the fan. I think it has some magical molecules that bind to the poop itself or something. Give him a bottle and tell him how to use it and you'll be the office hero.

Trust me.

Interesting...if I can make a positive ID of the perpetrator, I'll just leave it on his desk with instructions.

Mitchell wrote:

SVreX wrote: In reply to alfadriver: I have never built a trans gender bathroom, and am not complaining about it. If someone wants one, I'll be happy to accommodate. You are redirecting the issue by saying things I did not say. My point is the laws we are currently dealing with are ridiculous, and I fully expect them to get worse. The political impetus exists, and I've seen these kind of changes before. The cost is very, very real. Forcing businesses to spend money to make accommodations for imaginary people with problems that do not exist (like wheelchairs that can fly up a staircase) means less money available for real world problems, like raising employment rates, or investing in technological benefits or environmental improvements.

I think that a lot of the outrage arises over the finger pointing to trans individuals as being the threat, when statistically, the greatest threat to women and children are run of the mill straight men. Rather than correct the general rapiness embedded within many parts of dude culture, it's probably a lot easier to say that the problem is someone else.

And statistically, the vast majority of child abuse is conducted by a family member or close friend of the family.

So I say we outlaw parents raising their own children.

bastomatic wrote: Poo-Pourri is not your typical air-freshener. You spray it on the toilet bowl BEFORE the E36 M3 hits the fan. I think it has some magical molecules that bind to the poop itself or something. Give him a bottle and tell him how to use it and you'll be the office hero. Trust me.

Oh heck, neither I nor my son knew that! We'd been using it wrong, and it probably never occurred to my wife to explain to us how to use it.

Of course, now that I look at the web page, there it is: "Spritz 3-5 sprays into the toilet bowl on the water’s surface. Proceed to use the throne as usual. The natural essential oils create a barrier—trapping odor under the surface, before it begins! "

Though with my sons "unique" style, he'd still defeat it. 15 years old, and he still basically does this.

In reply to foxtrapper:

Well, that solves one of life's great mysteries for me: how the hell people manage to leave skid marks down the back of the seat.

You have to admit, it looks like a really comfortable way to read a magazine on the toilet!

I am amazed this isn't locked yet. Well done.

slefain wrote: Oh man, I dream of individual stall bathrooms. Not those fake "oh look, we put up a partition that still has 1' open at the bottom and no ceiling" stalls. No, a proper, country club, floor to ceiling with sheetrock walls and a door single holer stall. We had those at the Cox Enterprises headquarters building. A fortress of solitude to conduct one's business, however one chooses to conduct it. As for the building codes, it makes me think of the times I've seen stuff like this (probably done in the name of code compliance):

Some of the nicer hotels in NY have separate little rooms in the men's room with nice heavy oak doors and good ventilation that I assume directs the fumes onto peasants somewhere and a guy that hands you a towel at the sink. I try to seek these places out if I can.

As for odd ADA remodels one night I ducked into a subway station for my break. I had to go up and down 7 staircases and long dark corridors to reach the crew room. The bathroom had been remodeled and three stalls were ripped out to make one big accessible toilet.

KyAllroad wrote: Individual unisex bathrooms for all. Maybe we will see a big decline in sales of stall partitions since "one person, one bathroom" will replace the big communal "let's all E36 M3 in a line" as the standard of construction.

I agree with you completely here.

I actually have had that discussion with a few outspoken persons in the whole equality movement.....they seemed to get very very upset over "unisex for all" type restrooms. What the outspoken ones appear to be seeking is preferential treatment and the ability to thumb their noses at the rest of us, not equality. Equality is unisex bathrooms, PERIOD.

So let's talk gym locker rooms. What's going to happen when there are 70 year old Transgenders letting it all hang out, just as every 70+ year at the gym seems to.

While unisex seems to solve a lot of problems, it still is an extremely costly solution.

Single stall handicapped unisex require about 3X the square footage of standard partition baths. Some of the spaces I work in cost upwards of $1600 per square foot. Extra square footage is a pretty big financial burden.

I don't see why unisex bathrooms can't be standard partition type. The ones I use are. Just make the doors/stall walls go from floor to ceiling so that people actually have privacy to do their stuff, put the freaking urinals in stalls where they belong, and put in a loud fan or some kind of white noise maker so the place isn't a dead silent awkward hold-your-breath-fest. In other words, practice basic "nice" bathroom design as should have been done for everyone's bathrooms all along.

In picture words, NO:

mad_machine wrote: honestly. one big bathroom with locking stalls would solve a lot of issues.. how many times have been at a game and seen one man in the men's room and a line of ladies trying to get into theirs?

I've also been at sporting events where some women will say "berk this!" and go piss in the men's room. And this was when I was fairly young. Of course, they would use a stall rather than attempting to squat over a urinal. I don't recall anyone making a big deal about it. It's funny how some things were different in the 70's and 80's...

Much of this would go away if Americans would give up their Puritan attitudes towards sexuality. Unisex bathrooms. Done.

In an interesting coincidence, the office I'm currently working in has three individual M/F bathrooms. One of them is Accessible. The non-accessible ones are tiny. Barely wide enough for a toilet with the smallest hand sink they could find. On the other side of the office are a pair of more traditional Men's and Women's rooms. Comparing square footage, the three singles are smaller than either of the traditional bathrooms (2 urinals and a HC toilet in the Men's; I assume the Women's is similar).

JohnRW1621 wrote: Why is it that it is illegal to park in a handicap parking space but everyone uses the handicap stall?

Personally, I am less concerned since no one in the offices I work at is in a wheel chair. If there were, I would be not use the handicap stall as much.

In reply to Jay:

Still pricey.

Partitions are off the floor to enable mopping. As many have noted to this point, people are pigs. Bathrooms often have floor drains. Partitions to the floor would mean more floor drains.

Partitions to the ceiling in air conditioned spaces require ducting in each stall. Unconditioned spaces would still require venting in each stall.

And the actual partitions are expensive. More area of partition wall means higher price.

It could add $1000- 2000 per stall, plus increased ongoing maintenance costs (because harder to clean).

Here's an article outlining some of the building code challenges for gender neutral:

Reason.com article

SVreX wrote: In reply to Jay: Still pricey. Partitions are off the floor to enable mopping. As many have noted to this point, people are pigs. Bathrooms often have floor drains. Partitions to the floor would mean more floor drains. Partitions to the ceiling in air conditioned spaces require ducting in each stall. Unconditioned spaces would still require venting in each stall. And the actual partitions are expensive. More area of partition wall means higher price. It could add $1000- 2000 per stall, plus increased ongoing maintenance costs (because harder to clean).

true

..and lights with occupancy sensors in each "stall" for energy code compliance

..and fire alarm horn/strobes in each stall

..and on and on

alfadriver wrote: Maybe what we really need to do is go back to Roman/Greek times where there was a bathroom with about 100 holes along the wall of a 20x20 room. And use togas. Sitting only. No walls, and nothing to see. Can have a conversation better that way, too. Maybe even use marble so that it's nice and cold to speed up the process...

Having heard about the bathrooms in the Vatican (family friend trained to be a Canon lawyer there) they are a hole in the floor that you squat over. When he was there in the 60s, there were two distinct foorprints worn into the marble where a millennia of people have squatted there to go

SVreX wrote: In reply to Jay: Still pricey. Partitions are off the floor to enable mopping. As many have noted to this point, people are pigs. Bathrooms often have floor drains. Partitions to the floor would mean more floor drains. Partitions to the ceiling in air conditioned spaces require ducting in each stall. Unconditioned spaces would still require venting in each stall. And the actual partitions are expensive. More area of partition wall means higher price. It could add $1000- 2000 per stall, plus increased ongoing maintenance costs (because harder to clean).

Well they don't have to be all the way up & down, but enough that the expectation of privacy is preserved when in one. A 20cm floor gap isn't going to ruin anyone's day. I hate it when the partitions only come down to my knees and end at my neckline when sitting on the can.

That said if whoever's calling the shots is cheaping out so much on the bathroom that an extra half-meter of stall wall is unaffordable, I'd wonder what corners they're cutting with the rest of their business.

My comment about making the ventilation stay on permanently & be deliberately loud stands.

Not sure why I remember this, but I do. I once stopped at a rest area in South Carolina. Floor-to-ceiling concrete block walls between each toilet. It was like your own mini-bunker.

In reply to Jay:

A mop won't fit through a 20 cm gap. In fact, it would make it much worse. There would be a horribly nasty dirty stripe under that 20 cm gap.

Regarding pricing: Bathrooms do not produce revenue. Every square foot dedicated to a bathroom is a cost to a business.

I just priced bath partitions for a job. It was 5 stalls. The cheapest price was $1400. The good stuff was $4600. That was not exotic, just nice stainless.

That's nearly $1000 per stall. If the "extra half meter" increased the price by 30%, that would be $300 per stall.

And if "whoever's calling the shots" "cheaped out" and made that business decision, you would NOT question the rest of his business. You'd poo anyway.