The one test of courage we all must take in life – at some point – is using a public restroom. Shared by every adult across the globe, it’s a rite of passage that knows no bounds: culturally, economically, or by how dignified we try to act. Every time we enter, we all think the same thing: ‘God forbid this isn’t clean.’ It’s the same prayer we recite when crossing the Canadian border and they want to search your entire suitcase because you just know you smuggled something.
Business travel forced me into one grimy rest stop along the Boston – New York corridor last month.
Paintings on the wall that revealed no hints of what horrors lied within those four walls. As I opened the door labeled Men, I went into my natural element of danger analysis like most battle hardened soldiers would.
Restrooms and toilets house a unique brand of horror that transcends all logic. I immediately looked down to see if there were any brown pools of “miscellaneous fluid.” The results weren’t promising. It wasn’t catastrophic.
I’ve seen far worse in club bathrooms or stadium bathrooms, but it could’ve been cleaner. That also goes for stalls that claim to be cleaned ‘regularly’ or ‘hourly,’ right when you walk into the building. If that sign hasn’t been changed since Bush was president, I don’t want to know how low they keep the cleaning staff paid.
What fascinates me about public bathrooms isn’t how gross they are or aren’t. It’s what people do to avoid actual conversation about their routines. For instance, men standing at urinals occupy themselves with something not in arms length.
Usually the wall in front of them. Men also have a tendency to abruptly halt conversations the second they walk into a bathroom. They only continue once the door closes behind them.
Acting like you’re alone when you’re in public is an art form. My friend Bernard – who irons his socks – swears by what he calls his “restroom reconnaissance protocol.” His technique rivals what he likes to call “The wife sends you ahead system.” “If the girl’s restroom looks terrible,” he says, “you can only imagine the condition of the men’s room.”
Bernard lives by this theory because behind every woman’s ever-cocked phrase “My husband can never do anything right,” lays an undeniable truth that he applies to everything: he’s right. If Bernard can help it, he refuses to eat while traveling through public establishments because he refuses to use the outside bathrooms due to hygiene.
Instead, he plans out his pit stops with fancy hotels where he grazes like the cunning prince that he thinks he is. Whenever Bernard uses the restroom, I raise my eyebrows. You know why?
His method for determining a restroom. The first and most important factor when choosing a restroom is where I position myself. This difficult decision involves some very odd calculations.
Where the restroom is located before I enter (the closer to the exit, the quicker I can flee should things go south), when was the last person in here (spots on the seat make me question things I don’t want to), and lastly, the overall look of the toilet. Show me a toilet stall that looks like it could give up details about phantom beings that roamed the halls of decrepit haunted castles, and I’ll show you someone who actually studies toilets. Like any sane individual, appreciates their own mind.
The other gentleman noticed me studying the stalls in the department store bathroom. We locked eyes in the mirror. An unspoken truce was made between two veterans of public restroom war.
He gave me a slight nod, and we both understood that we were in this together – fighting off the evils of this porcelain wonder. Least touching the restroom itself, there’s minimizing your touch points. God I love the game we all play with public surfaces, trying our hardest not to touch anything.
I’ve watched grown men use their elbows, their feet, heck even toilet paper to avoid pressing down on soap dispenser faucets. My technique of leaving public bathrooms takes me through a series of elaborate moves to avoid natural hand-to-surface contact. I’ve been practicing this my whole life – fine tuning my movements to flow like a specialized orthopedic surgeon.
It’s funny how paper towels became a luxury in this day and age. Too weak to properly dry your hands, but necessary to essentially layer your hands with just enough to feel fresh and for exit strategies. I’ve caught myself calculating how many paper towels I need to both dry my hands and use as a barrier to push open doors.
In restrooms where they only provide air hand dryers, a mockery to all of humanity placed there by sadistic engineers, I’ve even considered using my shirt rather than touching the restroom door after washing my hands. Far and away, the worst public restrooms have always, and will always be gas station bathrooms you come across while driving through nowhere. Providing a midpoint between nirvana and Armageddon, these little shitholes exist by their own set of rules.
I once saw a gas station bathroom in rural Pennsylvania that had a sink so gross, I’m convinced it was meant to be used as a bucket to store fishing bait. Someone even placed a marker sign above it that read, “wash hands in toilet tank.” I chose dehydration. Luxury hotels like the Four Seasons, however, are a godsend when it comes to public cleanliness.
Complete with marble sink countertops, soft cloth towels, and employees who silently judge you on how well you clean your hands, they allow you to take pride in your time at the restroom. To celebrate my victory over the treacherous gas station bathroom, I spent nearly twenty minutes in the Four Seasons bathroom and the employee asked if I was OK and needed medical assistance. Choosing not to explain myself and surely demean myself in the process, I simply walked out leaving her a tip.
What really gets me about public bathrooms is how they change people. You’d think the same people who walk out of their homes every morning would have no problem gently placing their used paper towels in the trash can and washing the mild water they sprayed everywhere. Crazy stuff.
Public bathrooms make me feel like everyone loses their manners the second they walk through the door. My colleague Richard is an accountant who likes everything around him to be in perfect order. Richard told me shamelessly drooling all over the table that he doesn’t sit down when he uses public restrooms.
He prefers to hover over the toilet in what can only be described as a squat you’d see at WWE Wrestlemania. He goes on to boast, “It really gets your quads going.” Richard did a demonstration squat in the middle of the office get together and the younger members of our team could’ve possibly died from choking on their snacks. While I was entertained by the strength of his quadriceps, I was disgusted by how he chose to public display his technique.
Technology has not improved our restroom experience by any means. It’s almost impossible to turn on public motion sensor faucets. They seem to only recognize wild flailing of the arms versus an actual tap of the hand.
And those who happen to walk into the restroom as I’m attempting my fanciest of hand ballet may even question my mental stability. Yes they did turn on, but they only last for about 2.7 seconds. Exactly how long it takes to get your hands wet, but not long enough to rid your hands of soap.
The same goes for automatic toilet flushing systems. Smart enough to know when you’re done, but accurate enough to flush while your sitting on it. The toilet flushed itself while I was going #2 three times, and now that I’m finished it refuses to flush.
Now I’m left to search frantically for the manual flush option hidden behind the toilet like a secret lever. Let’s not even get started on the soap dispensers. You get either an avalanche of soap that pours over your hands drenching half your shirt or a pathetic squeeze of soap that evaporates before it even hits your skin.
There doesn’t seem to be a happy medium. What I will never understand is why soap in public bathrooms is always pink. Not only is it always bright pink, it always has the consistency of bubble gum.
On top of that, it smells like chemicals and makes your hands smell like you work construction. Here’s another thing about public restroom design that truly scares me. In America, we close our restroom stalls by locking a door with a slit in it.
That right there leaves a half-inch opening where complete strangers can make eye contact during the most inappropriate times imaginable. Countries around the world – including myself – have been robbed of a solution to this mystery. Is it for privacy?
Or did they just not spend money on extra material? Is it an experiment to see how many people can stare at each other without weirding each other out? Regardless of the reasoning, we have all been on the receiving end of this horrific action.
Tom, another neighbor of mine who travels frequently for work, likes to keep a running list of bathrooms. Rankings are based off of coverage, cleanliness, privacy, toilet paper quantity, but most importantly – how are you dried after washing your hands? “Triple crown bathrooms aren’t very common,” Tom told me.
“But the ones that are are legendary.”
Instead of taking notes on a piece of paper during bathroom excursions, Tom saves them to his phone. To me, he’s become overly paranoid. Tom also makes me think of those ancient maps that have sea monsters slapped on them.
Public bathrooms will always be here – they’re essential to where we live and work. Making us suffer at our most private moments. They create what many sociologists call “a social contract.” We provide you with these facilities, all we ask is that you leave them better than you found them for the next person.
How often this contract is broken is terrifying.
As I was exiting this war zone of a restroom, surviving with minimal contact and maximum efficiency, I looked around and thought about how we’re all connected by this miserable experience. Someone who hasn’t showered in days and lives in these restrooms for homeless victims.
Someone who just soiled their diaper and is having the time of their life. My next stop, the CEO of a multinational corporation. We all go to public bathrooms – into these foreign environments only equipped with hope and a small bottle of sanitizer.
The search for a perfectly clean public restroom continues…one that we can actually walk into without question and use.
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