So this rant is not really new. I think most men have issues with the etiquette in the men's room, and other freaks lack of compliance to it.
I'm going to break this down into three seperate sections;urinal, stall, hygiene.
Urinal:
There are three urinals in a men's room. The middle one (number 2) is occupied by someone when you walk in to the men's room. Which urinal do you use? The first or the third? WRONG you go into the stall in the absence of a stall you wait for the other individual to finish or you walk to another men's room. The last thing a man wants is to have his equipment in use and have another man sidle up a long side of him and invade the personal space bubble (ladies are exempt from this bubble for obvious reasons, even in the bathroom).
The rule as defined by me (NoFridays Law) is as follows. You must always leave an unused urinal between yourself and the next man. There are only two exceptions to this rule and they must be managed based on the situation at the time.
- Exception 1: The urinals have a divider between them. This shield of privacy is absorbed into the personal bubble and becomes part of your personal space. Most restrooms used to accommodating civilized men, or large numbers of men in a hurry (truck stops, buffalo wild wings, etc.) will all have these walls.
- Exception 2: You are drunk. Personal bubbles vanish when you are imbibing and the urinal rule is supplanted by the burning need to unload your cargo.
The stall should be self explanatory. But unfortunately not so much as I learned this week. Ideally the urinal rule should be used on the stall as well. Common sense would dictate a need to place as much space between yourself and any other man who needs to "read the paper", or play Angry Birds. That said, due to the presence of the walls (excluding the sicko half walls in the U-high restroom off of the cafeteria) does provide sufficient privacy to utilize the stall next to another person.
That stated, under NO CIRCUMSTANCES, should you enter a stall immediately vacated by someone else. I'm not talking about when you sit down and realize the seat is warm, and it's too late to relocate. I am speaking of the point where you enter the bathroom and observe another man leaving a stall. Unless you are Ice Man, Mr, Freeze, or Frost the f***ing Snow Man, and need the extra warmth to keep your from freezing to the seat, there can be no need to immediately use a stall used by someone else. Seriously, what type of sick fetish makes someone think this is a good idea
Additionally, if the stall has the unfortunate design (built by sickos in Brazil - see Two Girls One Cup) to have large gaps where the door is hung, there shall absolutely be NO PEEKING! I don't care if you have a wide stance, something in your eye, or were just curious, men are smelly, hairy, base animal creatures who have no need to be viewed will completing the mission. Seriously WTF. I had a manager (a woman) who's first job as a supervisor in the company I work for was to go around and measure the door gap in the men's rooms in the building (yes the men's room) because of all the complaints about other men peeking through the crack.
Note: I'd also like to make the following point to all the germa-phobes out there. If you lift a toilet seat with your hand, you can go immediately to the sink and wash it. If you lift it with your shoe, well...when was the last time you washed your shoe? Yes it may rain or snow, but when was the last time your shoe had a good anti-bacterial cleansing? Then you take the shoe home, walk across your kitchen floor, and likely your living room floor (where your kids roll around playing all day). Seriously, use your hand and for god's sake wash the damn thing.
Hygiene:
Finally we come to hygiene. WASH YOUR F***ing HANDS! Seriously you just got done doing the grossest thing you do in a day (I hope) and you don't even bother to wash your hands. I'm not talking about the social compliance of running water over your hands and then leaving. I mean use soap, cover all of both hands, and then scrub them together (for the length of time it takes to sing happy birthday...at least). Look I'm not a germa-phobe, far from it, I used to share ice cream cones with a farm dog for crying out loud, but I hate the idea that someone is walking around all day, spreading a little bit of their poop on everything they touch; the pop machine, the door handle, the copy machine, the ladle for sour cream in the cafeteria...well you get my point.
The other point I want to make here is the constant blame for the lack of hand washing on other ethnicities. I work in a multi-cultural building, and I'm here to say, for every person of a non Caucasian ethnicity who does it, there are four white trash (because the don't wash) jack-holes doing it. I've watched everyone under the sun, from all walks of life, pull this nasty sh** and it needs to stop.
I'd really like to consider the following options for people who can't find the 60 seconds to wash their grubby hands:
- Sticker them with a sign (much like a Kick Me sign) that says, "I'm a nasty dirty bag, and have poop on my hands."
- Squirt them in the crotch with a water pistol (just because).
- Point and laugh loudly.
- Run out of the men's room first screaming "He was touching himself" at the top of my lungs.
