Two Non-Cents Guide to Public Restrooms

If you haven’t noticed, Amanda and I are like modern day Miss Manners. Today we’ll take on public restrooms. This is written for the ladies, but I’m sure plenty of it also applies to men.

When you enter a bathroom, your first and biggest decision is what stall to choose. Your decision should be influenced on two things

1.) Cleaniness, and 2.) Other bathroom occupants. Cleanliness goes without saying. You’re never obliqued to use a dirty stall, no matter how good your balance is. But here’s what I mean by other bathroom occupants:

• You enter a bathroom and there’s four stalls. Let’s call these stalls A, B, C, and D. Your goal is to be as far away from any occupied stalls. So if stall A is occupied, your best choice is D. If D is dirty, or has a strong foul smell, your next choice should be stall C. Your last choice in this situation should be stall B. Things get trickier when the middle stalls are occupied. You should you enter an empty bathroom thinking of future occupants and take an end stall. No one wants a neighbor in the bathroom.

Like cars and check-out lines, bathrooms are no cell phone zones. You may sit on your home toilet and text while dropping a load, but doing so in public isn’t cool. Your goal should be to do your business and get out as fast as possible. It’s not a place to sit and play Angry Birds. Talking on the phone is also not cool. I don’t want to hear your one-sided conversations while I’m using the bathroom and I’m sure the person on the other line doesn’t want to hear everyone peeing. There’s few things that are so important that you can’t wait until your bladder is empty before making a phone call.

Don’t congregrate in the bathroom and don’t talk to me while I’m in the bathroom. If we walk into a bathroom together, I expect our conversation to stop the second my bathroom stall door shuts. I’m in this stall with only one thing on my mind,. Don’t distract me or make me wonder if you can hear me over the bathroom sounds. This also slows down the flow of entering and exiting a bathroom as fast as possible.

Get it all in the toilet and flush! This includes all bodily fluids and toilet paper. When in doubt, flush it twice. This should all go without saying, but there’s still some nasty people out there. It makes you wonder, do people get kicks out of making someone else throw up?

When you gotta go, you gotta go. So if you walk into a bathroom while someone’s dropping some kids into the pool, don’t yell out “What is that smell?!” or “Oh my god, is SOMEBODY sick?” We all know damn well what that smell is, there’s no need to embarrass anyone. Suck it up. Hold your breath, do your business and leave. On the other end of the stick, if you can, please avoid funking up a bathroom. If you can wait until you get home, or go to bathroom with less traffic, do so.

Do your doody duty and make our bathrooms a better place.