Bathroom Blunders

Ladies, please.  Could you be a little less gross in public restrooms?  I know men get a bad rap for nastiness in the john, and it's really quite warranted.  However, we're not far behind.

One of my pet peeves is a sprinkler tinkler.  That is a woman who is so petrified of the toilet seat and what may be on it, that she hovers, sprinkles on the seat when she tinkles, and proceeds to exit the stall without cleaning up the drops.  Perhaps these women don't realize that they ARE the problem.  If everyone just sat their bums down on the seat, we wouldn't have various things ending up on seats that shouldn't be there.

Do I enjoy the idea of plopping unclothed areas of my body down on an item that has been touched by someone else's naked booty?  Of course not.  But common sense and decades of research filter into my head when I enter a stall, reminding me that I'm really not going to catch anything.  And a simple wipe of the seat with toilet paper is more than sufficient to remove any lingering particles.  If that's not good enough, toilet paper makes a nice buffer between your tush and the allegedly diseased seat.

Another character I dislike in women's bathrooms is the foot flusher.  I've recently learned that this concept is new to many men.  For those of you still in the dark, this is the woman who is so disgusted by the thought of touching a toilet handle that she instead hobbles around on one foot, trying to lift the other high enough to flush the toilet.  I've been in stalls next to women who outright fall against the stall or nearly stumble over trying to perform said maneuver.  Perhaps they should think of how dirty the stall walls are before grabbing hold of them for balance, or the horribly repulsive nature of the floor should footing completely be lost and the perp ends up falling into a puddle of questionable contents.

Don't do it.  Seriously, don't.

I found that most men (whom, I might add, flush urinals with hands that have been handling much more sensitive and germ ridden things.  Think about it.) who hear about foot flushing outright laugh at it, thinking it's a joke at first.  I just find it rather asinine.  The argument I've heard for foot flushing is that there are germs on the handle.  Really?  There are germs on EVERYTHING.  That handle has the same number of germs as the door you had to open to get into the stall, the lock you have to close and then open to get out, the faucet you touch to turn the water on, the paper towel dispenser or air dryer you push to dry your hands and the door handle you push to get out of the bathroom.  We don't do any of these things with our feet, do we?  And considering you really should be going directly from the stall to the sink to wash up anyway, I'm pretty sure that 30 seconds of germs on your hands from the flusher won't kill you.  I'm going to say again that these women ARE the problem.  If everyone used their hands instead of some using feet, the toilet handles would be far cleaner.  No worrying about what some person tracked in on their shoes ending up on your hands.  But again, I stress the practice of going immediately to the sink to wash up after flushing as a cure-all. 

Lastly, (this is not my final gripe about restroom behavior in general, it is simply the last I will burden you with here) I think it is unfortunate that I have to mention the need to flush.  While this is not solely a women's bathroom problem, men clearly need to flush less often in public restrooms, and it's therefore a less pressing issue.  Apparently there are some adults out there who never mastered the flushing concept as toddlers, and somehow as luck would have it, I seem to be in line behind them in the restroom.  There's this not-so-new invention being adopted in more and more bathrooms--toilets that flush automatically.  This innovation saves us from the foot flushers, but is far from perfected.  Few toilets I have used seem to have a fully functioning electric eye.  I have let out more than a few curse words at overly sensitive models that end up flushing three times while I'm still seated and proceed to spray me with who knows what from the bowl.  Then there are the ones that never really seem to flush, even after I get up and get ready to leave the stall.  We've all been there.  But you know what we all HAVEN'T done, apparently?  Reach back to that little button over the electric eye and PUSH IT when the toilet doesn't flush on its own.   This is not a hard concept people, but for some it appears to be rocket science.  You've been potty trained for years, so if you don't hear the familiar swirling behind you after you've done your business, you're not done yet.  Turn around and push that button.

Push the button. You know you want to.

The worst automatic flush offender I have ever experienced was a woman at work.  Our office shares a bathroom with other offices on the floor, so I didn't know this woman, thank goodness.  I was doing my thing and she was next to me and finished first.  She walked out of the stall and there was no flush.  I flushed, went to the sink to wash and noted that she was washing her hands as well.  She must have suddenly realized there was no flush when she exited the stall, so she went back to the stall, held the door open and looked in. Mind you, I can see this all happening very clearly because our restroom only houses three stalls.  She stood there and looked at the contents of the toilet with the stall door open for a full 5 seconds, during which time I could see that it definitely was not "number one" in there.  After standing there and looking at her toilet mess, she STILL DIDN'T PUSH THE BUTTON and proceeded to walk out of the bathroom.  Who does that?  What is wrong with people like that who see what they've done and still don't try to get rid of the mess?  And just plain EEEEEWWWWWWW.

I'm going to completely leave out lesser, but definitely annoying, restroom offenses such as cell phone talking (you better believe I'm going to make a bunch of noise and flush a lot if I hear you on the phone in there), talking to ME while I'm doing my thing (I probably will ignore you so don't try it in the first place), hogging sink space to do your primping while I am trying to get in to wash my hands (I'll probably splash you if you don't move), and of course, choosing a directly adjacent stall when there are others available farther away from me.

Look, having to use a public restroom is never something we really seek out or enjoy.  We do intimate things in there that we have to pretend nobody else sees or hears.  But we can lessen the unpleasantness by just employing a few courteous strategies.  1. You are not a helicopter, so don't hover.  2.  You are not a karate master, so keep your foot down when flushing.  3. You are not a president deciding whether to wage nuclear war, so you SHOULD push the button.