Men's Room Etiquette

Disclaimer: if a frank discussion about what takes place in public restrooms is likely to offend you, please skip this piece and choose another selection.

Last chance!

You were warned.....

************************************************************************************
At my place of employment, I work with a group that includes roughly 60-70 men, sharing 4 bathrooms.  The main restroom, most convenient to the largest number of people and nearest to the break room, contains a row of 5 urinals and 2 stalls.  The urinals, unfortunately, lack the dividing barriers found in most new construction these days.

Unlike many people, I've never had a problem defecating in public restrooms.  If nature calls, I can't comprehend not answering.  I sometimes have to heed the siren song while working, which is fine since toilet paper is normally plentiful and everything in good repair.   What makes using the toilets nearly unbearable, however, is the urine generously splashed all over the seats.

Yes, that's right.  Despite the presence of 5 perfectly good urinals, my coworkers choose to empty their bladders in the stalls.  Not content with merely taking up space in the stalls, which serve a purpose beyond  urination, it's almost as if they're purposely drenching the seats rather than making any effort to hit the water.

I'm old enough to remember having to piss in the most horrendous of all public facilities, the troughs common in large stadiums and sports arenas in the 1970s. The trough mocked all notions of modesty or privacy.  For the uninitiated, imagine sidling up to a long, low bathtub, with nothing keeping your neighbor from standing shoulder to shoulder with you, as was often the case at halftime of an NFL game or between innings of an MLB game.  Not only might you be physically touching another person while attempting to pee, often the layout of the trough would be designed for maximum efficiency and be OPEN ON BOTH SIDES.  No, you didn't misread that.  Men, often inebriated, would have to queue up directly across from one another to pee.  heaven help you if you were wearing a rival team's jersey or the gentleman across from you was impaired in any way.  The trough offered no protection from what was, in essence, a fire hose filled with piss pointed in your general direction.  The number of fistfights precipitated by the trough must have been staggering.

Back to present day, most public restrooms offer a row of urinals separated by dividers.  Those afflicted with homophobia, stage fright, micro-phallus or any combination of same have complete protection from prying eyes. The barriers are one of life's little pleasures that make western civilization bearable.

As I mentioned previously, the main restroom where I work affords no such luxury.  It does offer 5 neatly spaced urinals, with plenty of elbow room.

General men's room etiquette dictates that no man stand at a urinal adjacent to one already in use, should another be available.  A good rule, similar to the one banning talking to someone going to the bathroom.  These are conventions with which I was raised, and I assume I'm not alone.  You walk in, perform your reconnaissance, and select the appropriate urinal.  Approach, unzip, eliminate waste, zip up, flush and walk away, hopefully to the sink to wash your hands.

If all urinals are available,  the nearest to the door is my first choice.  If one is in use, I occupy one an appropriate distance away.

What I've noticed at work is troubling.  Perhaps it's a function of having been raised in the Midwest, or the difference in age between me and most of my coworkers, but I've observed time and again these heathens bypassing the urinals in favor of the stalls or walking past the first four urinals to get to the 5th one, by the wall, where they angle themselves so that their back is to the entrance to the men's room while they do their business.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking to watch any man urinate, but the exaggerated fashion in which they seem so desperate to hide themselves is bizarre.

The peculiar urinary habits aside, what really sticks in my craw is the piss-poor (no pun intended) aim so many of them seem to share.  Using the stall to pee is bad enough, but they go in there and seem to take great pleasure in rendering the toilets practically unusable.  Are they marking their territories like dogs?  Are they rebelling against their more well-endowed brethren by making some sort of angry statement at having been banished from the urinals?

I'm completely at a loss.

Not as much a loss, of course, as I suffered when entering a rest stop bathroom outside Yuma, AZ, on a hot summer day a few years ago.  I walked in to find a man, clad only in shorts, at the time pooled around his ankles, in a wide stance in front of a urinal, both hands high up, palms flat against the wall as if he'd been ordered to assume the frisking position by a police officer.  Given the option of urinating near that individual, I took the coward's way out and locked myself in a stall.  Where I proceeded to pee masterfully, every drop hitting the water with surgical precision, leaving the seat bone dry, as I'd found it.