Babeled

Public restrooms can be a scary place. All too often I find myself in offensive, rude, or just plain disgusting situations in a public restroom, and most of those are in office buildings with co-workers. You expect a certain degree of nastiness when you’re in a highway rest area or at an airport, but right down the hall in your own office? It’s time for the Edict of Public Restroom Etiquette to be pronounced.

1. Never, under any circumstances, should you be on the cell phone while dropping a deuce. What you do at home is your business, but don’t force strangers to listen to not only your flatulence, but your obnoxious and self-absorbed phone conversation as well. If you MUST communicate with this other person and it cannot wait the five minutes to do your business, learn to use text messages. This is much more polite to those around you.
2. If you are going to attempt the courtesy flush, perform it properly. Example of improper courtesy flushing: continuously flushing throughout your errand - this wastes significant amounts of water and is very irritating.
3. Do not grunt at extreme decibel levels. You’re not bench-pressing 300 lbs., you’re performing a natural function which should come fairly easily; and if it doesn’t, the rest of us don’t need to know about it.
4. Urinals must be flushed. They aren’t magical auto-draining pee pipes.
5. Urinals were created for men to be lazy. This means you can complete your task without dropping your pants, so do us all a favor and keep them up at your waist. If you require pants-around-your-ankles status to relieve yourself, go in a stall.
6. Nose-picking products are not to be placed on the walls of the room or the stalls. If you are in a stall then there is a paper product at your fingertips which can alleviate you of this variable-consistency mucous mound. If you’re at a urinal, wait until you’ve finished up and use a paper towel or some TP from a stall. It’s time to be an adult and take responsibility for your actions, don’t just leave your filthy olfactory mess anywhere you please.
7. Utilize the multi-flush, if necessary. More than likely you have, at least once in your life, produced something so vast that there is no way the poor porcelain prince can handle it coupled with wads of TP. Flush intermittently to avoid clogging our little friend. Remember, if you block it up no one else can use it after you and it leaves a lingering nasty odor in addition to the vomitous surprise one gets when they unsuspectingly walk into a stall with a clogged bowl.
8. Wash your hands. This is not negotiable, but can be attained through varying degrees of thoroughness. If you are in numero uno mode, a courtesy rinse would be nice if you don’t have the time / motivation / hygiene-sense to go through the soap plus water thing. Dropping the kids off at the pool ALWAYS mandates soap + water. Not everyone who has to touch the door handle wants to touch bacteria from your private parts.
9. If there is the opportunity to leave an empty stall between yourself and another stall occupant, do it. No one likes to be crowded.
10. Should any part of what you are trying to get rid of not make it into the proper receptacle, make a reasonable attempt to clean up after yourself. Most of the time the restroom will not be cleaned until the evening, and therefore everyone else will have to deal with whatever you couldn’t hit the target with all day long.
11. Never sing. Especially not 80’s pop songs.
12. Do not talk to strangers while they are performing their duty. They probably wouldn’t talk to you on the street, let alone next to them in a bathroom where one’s clothing and pride are compromised.
13. Don’t leave reading material for future occupants. While this may seem like an altruistic gesture in your mind, it is in reality disgusting. Your hands weren’t touching only that newspaper, you know…

All amendments to this Edict must be passed by a 2/3 majority of the Public Restroom Etiquette Council, comprised of: me. I acknowledge that this list is geared toward Men’s rooms. I do not go in Ladies’ rooms, so ladies, please feel free to amend the list with those offenses that apply to your water closet.

Image used in this post

Public bathroom courtesy of Flickr user Irojas2cr