Okay, maybe I’m just another spoiled American, used to having lots of personal space, but something has been bothering me recently. I’ve ranted about restrooms before, but this is a little different. This time I thinking more of general behavior.
I know most women have never been in a men’s restroom, but they are disgusting places. They also aren’t really designed for privacy in any way. Urinals are a great invention for its simplicity, but the way they are installed leaves room for improvement. Generally they are only about a foot apart with a pathetic divider between them. Stalls have full formed walls dividing them. Urinals get a one foot by three foot board mounted so it starts at your shin and goes up about chest high on me. That means it ends at about 4.5 feet. What’s the point? This isn’t high enough to offer privacy, so I’m not sure why they bother.
The place this really becomes a problem is in busy restrooms. Of course the busiest restrooms, the ones in sporting facilities, don’t even bother with dividers. Reliant and Minute Maid in Houston both just have a wall of urinals all spaced about a foot apart. This results in lines of men staring at the wall trying to ignore everyone around them. Fun stuff. Sadly this is an improvment over the Astrodome. They just had a giant metal trough. No division, just a huge trough that everyone had to line up at. Classy.
The big problem with all of this isn’t even the restroom itself much of the time. Its the people using it. For example, if there are five urinals and I’m the only one using one I generally choose one by the wall. This eliminates the potential to be surrounded. Now why, every once and a while does some creepy guy decide in this situation to use the urinal next to me? There are four options and they choose the creepiest one. That’s just wrong. Same thing goes for the stalls. I thought it was an understood thing, there should always be a buffer whenever possible. I understand when restrooms are busy the buffer isn’t always possible, but seriously people why would you not have a buffer? Do you really think someone wants to share the experience with you that much? Do you really want to share someone else’s time with them?
Like I said, maybe its an American thing, maybe its a guy thing, I don’t know. I know other guys are this way, I just wish they all were. So next time you use the restroom go ahead and spare me the closeness and leave that little buffer. I’d thank you, but talking while using the restroom is a whole other rant.
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