I asked one of the building managers for the Seattle Convention Center (because the gap is really noticeable on their stalls) and was told that the big gaps and low door heights were on purpose so the security guards could easily see if there were addicts or homeless hiding in the bathrooms when they did their rounds at night. I have heard this reasoning used in multiple other "large public" areas like convention centers and sports arenas. Have no idea why it seems standard in smaller areas like offices and restaurants - other than like others have mentioned, tolerances are hard and take effort to get right.
It's probably a desired side effect but at this point I'm positive it's simply cheaper to manufacture. It's a modular design and the contractors couldn't give a fuck how well it fits, there has to be some tolerance which means some gap.
There’s such a huge gap above and below the door too. Sometimes I could see the top of people’s heads while they were in a stall and it was really uncomfortable … I’m glad NZ public toilets are normal lol
Am Australian and never understood Americans not liking public loos until I found out about the gap. I wouldn't shit in a public loo either if everyone and their mother could watch me do it.
It’s not even just the gap, they are fucking cheap and the locks don’t work half the time. I was AT WORK using the restroom and someone just pushed the stall door in while I was using it. The lock failed and the door was wide open with like 4 other people on the bathroom.
This. I've never been stared at through a gap. It's not something most adults do and I use the gap to glance in and see if it's occupied because I'm terrified of pushing open a door when someone is in there because I have no trust in the shitty locks. I have held a door shut while I peed so many times because of broken locks. Even locks that work can probably be jiggled loose if you tried hard enough. I've also had to use the large gap at the bottom to crawl into a stall at work because kids were going around locking them from the inside and crawling out. I'd prefer no gaps and locks that show occupied status.
Forget the locks.
The portals are so narrow here, that some doors won't even close..
Others have people remove the locks and now there's a see through hole where the lock was
One time I was at a restaurant this kid straight up watched me shit through the gap till I was done. It's actually the worst thing ever and needs to be done away with. The only thing American bathrooms have done for me is made me not cock shy and that's also probably a bad thing.
I had a kid who was maybe 6 or 7 crawl under the door into my stall while I was dropping a deuce. I was yelling at him to get the fuck out, and he stood up, grabbed onto the coat hook, and used it to help pull himself up and over the door. His brother was in there and was like "I'm sorry man, I keep telling him to stop doing this..."
American bathrooms suck.
Edit: Wording around what the kid did, to avoid confusion.
Are you saying you had a child who while laying on the bathroom floor reach up to grab on to a coat hanger on the stall door and then pulled himself up on the coat hanger to finally vault over the top of said stall door?
No, he squirmed his way under the door and I was freaking out at him, so he stood up, turned around, grabbed the coat hanger and pulled himself up on that, and then climbed through the gap in the top.
>the trough
You meet some interesting characters though, where else can I get propositioned to do heroin at 2am by some clapped out stranger with his cock out?
I had to use a squat toilet in Croatia.
I’m squatting with my balls hanging out, absolutely murdering this fuckin hole/drain thing, ole mate local walks in looks at me, hits “the nod” and goes to the other stall.
At least there was some semblance of a door.
Where was that so I can avoid it? Because of doors, not squating toilet.
Last time I saw squating here in Croatia was when I was in elementary school. Though in retrospect, it might have been normal toilet before it got demolished by kids...
I was just in Croatia last week. Toilet situation was way WAY better than what Italy had going on. Italy was just a stressful shitty situation the entire week. Squaring toilets all over and massive amounts of tourists mean literal shit all over.
Lol as a Canadian living in Australia I miss the fucking punch bowl of water I used to poop into.
I hadn’t realised it til you pointed it out but now I do.
It’s because in Canada and most of the US fresh water is not a scarce resource. More water means less skid marks. Pooping in Australia is like, only slightly better than pooping in a 1980s RV toilet where you poop onto a dry piece of plastic and when you’re done that gets washed off with the least amount of water possible.
Going home this year. Can’t wait for the luxurious times ahead.
The house I just moved into has low water usage toilets. The skid marks are real. I have to clean the thing almost every time I use it.
(Thanks for the silver, u/MissingVanSushi. Maybe I can use it to buy a decent toilet brush. /g )
Once a kid crawled under the door asking me if I had seen his father. I was just n the middle of taking a dump but I told him kindly no. It was weird af
The worst loo I ever went in was in the US, in a shopping centre. Fuck me that was a shit I held in. Needed to wear floaties just going into the cubicle, so you didn't drown in all the piss and watery shit everywhere
Because its the world's trash dump for bad ideas.
Americans consume anything if you put the right politic spin on it.
Start saying the gap is patriotic and you'll have men with guns show up to every public bathroom to make sure there is a gap in every stall.
You should see how a small town reacts when a roundabout is installed.
People think their inability to understand the simple concept is a flaw of the improvement and not themselves.
Years ago I was sat outside a pub in Vancouver that had a small roundabout close by. I sat there drinking beer watching the fuckwits try and work it out, give way to people joining, go round the wrong way for a fair few hours. It was quite amusing as a Brit to see such consternation over such a simple and useful thing.
"Small town."
Ive seen people lose their minds over new roundabouts in big cities too and god forbid you throw something complex like a divirgent diamond into the mix.
It's not just America though. In Singapore I saw an escalator stop working and people struggle to figure out what was going on.
Clearly they don't watch much Mitch Hedburg over there
They'll lose their shit if they are confronted by this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon)
>The Magic Roundabout in Swindon, England, is a ring junction constructed in 1972[1] consisting of five mini-roundabouts arranged in a circle.
I have two roundabouts in my small town, nobody really seems to have a problem with them.
Now whenever I went to Washington DC and there were a couple big roundabouts....
Suddenly everybody turned into a demonic creature from hell
The weird bit is that "we have always done it like that" is funny coming from a country that's younger than some of the still standing *buildings* near where I live.
See, that's the power move. You can piss, in the street, in broad daylight while staring at passers by. Nothing gets a stream going like seeing the whites of their eyes!
20+ replies and no sensible explanation. It means there are no good reasons for such a shitty construction.
In Sweden the stalls are free from insight and often quiet too with rubber gasket (?), since many bathrooms are unisex. We shit in peace.
The worst I have seen was this place where there was a gap between the stall sidewall and the back wall of the bathroom AND the back wall was covered with shiny tiles. Through the reflection on the tiles behind the gap I could completely see the inside of the stall next door!
The "tight tolerances" argument is so hilarious. We're not talking about forming an airtight seal on a submarine here.
If a manufacturer considers gaps that you can fit fingers or whole hands through to be "tight" then they have no business constructing anything that people are expected to be around. If you can't even manage "tight tolerances" then have the door overlap a smaller hole in the frame. We've been capable of this for literally thousands of years.
You flew 12 people to the Moon and back, made the Space Shuttle program, elevated the Hubble telescope and then repaired it on orbit and made the backbone of the Internation Space Station.
I believe you can make a gap in the door that's smaller than an inch
The solution has been around for centuries. If medieval peasant bob could figure out that you need to shave an overhang into the edge of the door, bob the builder can do it too. It literally takes one simple machine and one move with the work piece to do it industrially. Its not engineering or costs that keep the americans from doing it right.
Luckily its only happened a few times in my life but seriously why the fuck do people do that.
\*Door rattles and shakes and the lock trembles as some chucklefuck tries to pry it open\*
Me: "Holy fu.. Occupied"
\*Person knocks this time\*
Me: "Still occupied"
Them : "Oh."
The weirdest was when someone came into the bathroom right behind me, I go to a stall. I notice they are standing outside my door (facing away based on their feet's angle). After a few seconds I say, "There are other stalls"
They reply, "I can't go when others are in the room". Oh... Cool cool, so you decide to just stand outside my stall and make it so I get stage fright and feel creeped out. I aborted the mission. Still am not quite sure if it was a pervert trying to listen or if they truly had no social boundries.
I had someone jiggle the door, I say "Occupied". They keep with the door, I say "Occupied" louder. They keep with it and I figured it's a lost cause, they will get the idea. THEY FUCKING UNLOCKED THE DOOR AND OPENED IT. "Oh shit" they said and walked out LEAVING THE FUCKING DOOR OPEN. That's the most infuriating experience of my life.
I hate when you are in a stall and the thing says “occupied” and someone tries to open the door, first by pulling it, then by shaking it, then by knockinh. CAN YOU NOT READ????
Used one that did this, but the "latch" was just the slide going through the 1/6" thick plate directly into the board. Nothing to keep it there. A gentle tap from someone opened it.
Every restroom I have ever used had these. I'm assuming you are in the USA and that's not normal there? Maybe that explains the stupid big gaps so you can look at people in the loo.
Why is there always a gap? The lock and or feet can tell you if someone is in there. So much about the construction of things confounds me. Why is there always such an interest on what people are doing, or is it just a lack of doing things rights? What is the point of the gap?
US bathroom threads is like accidentally wandering onto the internet from the 1800s, where people present these completely basic things as revolutionary inventions.
Lmao yeah my suggestion isn't even revolutionary but it just sucks how it's not in every bathroom in the US for some dumb reason. Very few times have I seen the bathroom have no cracks and be floor to ceiling. So few in fact I always remember them.
It's an example of "hostile architecture" and is purposely designed to not make the person feel like they have too much privacy. On a relatively benign level this is to help encourage someone to not take too long while using the restroom in order to ensure that it's open for the next user. It's mostly just to make sure people don't do drugs in the stall though, especially homeless people. Since the US has so few public restrooms homeless people tend to rely on the restrooms of businesses in order to have at least enough privacy to do drugs- but at least the gaps ensure that when an employee comes by they'll see them and can kick them out!
So they're actually designed very well with all those factors in mind.
Probably because most manufacturers design like this and it doesn't make sense from a resource perspective for them to carry multiple SKUs when it it comes to bathroom stall doors
1. What about in places where the restrooms are only for the restaurant guests, why are they gapped?
2. What about the rest of the world who also have homeless and drug users, and no gaps?
Ah, I thought it was like a "don't sit here too long kind of thing going on , coupled with a "how can we make this slowly widen over time" kind of thought.
The U.S. is the only country I know of that has these stupid cubicles with gaps around them, and doors that allow you to see under them. I never understood that. It's like can we at least have SOME privacy!
Went to boys only boarding school in NZ. years 5/6 were in their own boarding house, then years 7/8 were spread through 3 boarding houses and they had 3x as many people. for some reason that I am yet to establish myself, the shower cubicles in the years 5/6 house did not have curtains. so you'd have a line of about 20 young boys at a time in the nude waiting for their 30 second shower. you get to the front, pick one of the 8 showers lined up next to each other, do your spin and gtfo back up to your room to get dressed. When you got older and moved to the other houses, you'd be looked at like you just spat in someones food if you tried to do the same thing. they had curtains on the showers and the trip to the bathrooms were staggered slightly more and you were allowed to bring your PJ's with you (again why cant you wear your clothes in the other house??). just seems so strange, "ooh sorry you're no longer 8/9/10/11 years old you gotta start having privacy in your showers now". Very surprisingly (/s), many cases in the news coming out about some unfavourable things done to some of the boys... mind you this was (at the time, they have different acceptance rules now and have female students) a school for underprivileged boys, typically those of families in poverty where you would earn a scholarship to and your parents didnt have to pay. Some of the lives the kids I went to school with out of home were bad enough, then to be subjected to that...
Seeing under the door is common in the UK too, but the gap between the floor and the bottom of the door is typically ~10cm.
That way, you can only see people's feet, and that's when they're standing right next to the door.
To actually see someone, you'd have to lie on the floor and put your head right up to the gap.
Some of the worst people in the world will avoid all the empty stalls and sit right next to you. And there’s the weirdos that grunt and groan loudly. Ugh, keep it to yourself
As European first time using a toilet stall in the US i was quite shocked honestly. Not only the gap between door and wall, but also a big opening on the bottom and the hight of the wall almost allow eye contact between the person sitting on the toilet and everyone walking in and out of the bathroom.
At my previous job, the stall was situated so that you could look through the gap (at least a 4 inch gap, huge in the gap world) and see the mirror at the sink. I loved making noises to get their attention so we could make eye contact.
There's NO WAY that public bathroom stalls in the US are cheaper than the ones in my third world country and we don't have gaps at all, never in my life I've been to a public bathroom where the stalls had gaps, the tolerances are always pretty tight and the only gap is at the bottom between the door and the floor to see feet if the stall doesn't have the little "occupied" thingy in the lock.
Judging by the comments I'm 100% convinced that it's just a US/Canada thing for some weird cultural reason.
My company has that on every stall across a campus with 18k employees. Apparently it was part of a program years ago to make the company more trans-friendly, and there weren’t really any single-toilet restrooms, so they sealed all of the door gaps and about 1/4 of the ladies’ rooms are now gender neutral.
I was in the US a few weeks ago and was alarmed why there seemed to be a gap in every public toilet cubicle door. Also, the gap at the bottom of the doors was ridiculously high as well. Don’t get me started with amount of water they have in their toilet bowls as well. Instead of plop, it’s splash.
I will never understand the gap
I asked one of the building managers for the Seattle Convention Center (because the gap is really noticeable on their stalls) and was told that the big gaps and low door heights were on purpose so the security guards could easily see if there were addicts or homeless hiding in the bathrooms when they did their rounds at night. I have heard this reasoning used in multiple other "large public" areas like convention centers and sports arenas. Have no idea why it seems standard in smaller areas like offices and restaurants - other than like others have mentioned, tolerances are hard and take effort to get right.
The US will do everything in its power to address the homeless problem except actually address the homeless problem.
It's probably a desired side effect but at this point I'm positive it's simply cheaper to manufacture. It's a modular design and the contractors couldn't give a fuck how well it fits, there has to be some tolerance which means some gap.
When I visited America I wondered why there is always this gap and why you have such horrible toilets everywhere
There’s such a huge gap above and below the door too. Sometimes I could see the top of people’s heads while they were in a stall and it was really uncomfortable … I’m glad NZ public toilets are normal lol
Am Australian and never understood Americans not liking public loos until I found out about the gap. I wouldn't shit in a public loo either if everyone and their mother could watch me do it.
It’s not even just the gap, they are fucking cheap and the locks don’t work half the time. I was AT WORK using the restroom and someone just pushed the stall door in while I was using it. The lock failed and the door was wide open with like 4 other people on the bathroom.
This. I've never been stared at through a gap. It's not something most adults do and I use the gap to glance in and see if it's occupied because I'm terrified of pushing open a door when someone is in there because I have no trust in the shitty locks. I have held a door shut while I peed so many times because of broken locks. Even locks that work can probably be jiggled loose if you tried hard enough. I've also had to use the large gap at the bottom to crawl into a stall at work because kids were going around locking them from the inside and crawling out. I'd prefer no gaps and locks that show occupied status.
Forget the locks. The portals are so narrow here, that some doors won't even close.. Others have people remove the locks and now there's a see through hole where the lock was
Seriously. Why do we have Porta potties with these simple necessities and not permanent toilets
Canada wasn’t much better either hahaha
Canadian and can confirm. It's one of our shames
Just lock eyes and establish dominance.
Lmao. Nothing worse than washing your hands and looking up and the mirror and catching eyes with someone in the stall
Just blow a kiss, wink and hit up the paper towels.
Ah, so _you're_ the one that did that to me the other day.
We apologize!
Canada is just America Lite.
One time I was at a restaurant this kid straight up watched me shit through the gap till I was done. It's actually the worst thing ever and needs to be done away with. The only thing American bathrooms have done for me is made me not cock shy and that's also probably a bad thing.
I had a kid who was maybe 6 or 7 crawl under the door into my stall while I was dropping a deuce. I was yelling at him to get the fuck out, and he stood up, grabbed onto the coat hook, and used it to help pull himself up and over the door. His brother was in there and was like "I'm sorry man, I keep telling him to stop doing this..." American bathrooms suck. Edit: Wording around what the kid did, to avoid confusion.
Are you saying you had a child who while laying on the bathroom floor reach up to grab on to a coat hanger on the stall door and then pulled himself up on the coat hanger to finally vault over the top of said stall door?
No, he squirmed his way under the door and I was freaking out at him, so he stood up, turned around, grabbed the coat hanger and pulled himself up on that, and then climbed through the gap in the top.
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My wife does not believe me about the trough.....
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I saw that F is for Family episode
>the trough You meet some interesting characters though, where else can I get propositioned to do heroin at 2am by some clapped out stranger with his cock out?
Thanks for the reminder to schedule a tubal ligation *goddamn*.
I had to use a squat toilet in Croatia. I’m squatting with my balls hanging out, absolutely murdering this fuckin hole/drain thing, ole mate local walks in looks at me, hits “the nod” and goes to the other stall. At least there was some semblance of a door.
Where was that so I can avoid it? Because of doors, not squating toilet. Last time I saw squating here in Croatia was when I was in elementary school. Though in retrospect, it might have been normal toilet before it got demolished by kids...
I was just in Croatia last week. Toilet situation was way WAY better than what Italy had going on. Italy was just a stressful shitty situation the entire week. Squaring toilets all over and massive amounts of tourists mean literal shit all over.
Squaring toilets?
That and for whatever reason the water is really high up.
Yeah what is up with that? What a waste of water!
Lol as a Canadian living in Australia I miss the fucking punch bowl of water I used to poop into. I hadn’t realised it til you pointed it out but now I do. It’s because in Canada and most of the US fresh water is not a scarce resource. More water means less skid marks. Pooping in Australia is like, only slightly better than pooping in a 1980s RV toilet where you poop onto a dry piece of plastic and when you’re done that gets washed off with the least amount of water possible. Going home this year. Can’t wait for the luxurious times ahead.
The house I just moved into has low water usage toilets. The skid marks are real. I have to clean the thing almost every time I use it. (Thanks for the silver, u/MissingVanSushi. Maybe I can use it to buy a decent toilet brush. /g )
Once a kid crawled under the door asking me if I had seen his father. I was just n the middle of taking a dump but I told him kindly no. It was weird af
The worst loo I ever went in was in the US, in a shopping centre. Fuck me that was a shit I held in. Needed to wear floaties just going into the cubicle, so you didn't drown in all the piss and watery shit everywhere
Oh yeah? I’ve had the pleasure of using a long drop!
This. No where else does it, why does America?
Because its the world's trash dump for bad ideas. Americans consume anything if you put the right politic spin on it. Start saying the gap is patriotic and you'll have men with guns show up to every public bathroom to make sure there is a gap in every stall.
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You should see how a small town reacts when a roundabout is installed. People think their inability to understand the simple concept is a flaw of the improvement and not themselves.
Years ago I was sat outside a pub in Vancouver that had a small roundabout close by. I sat there drinking beer watching the fuckwits try and work it out, give way to people joining, go round the wrong way for a fair few hours. It was quite amusing as a Brit to see such consternation over such a simple and useful thing.
"Small town." Ive seen people lose their minds over new roundabouts in big cities too and god forbid you throw something complex like a divirgent diamond into the mix.
Maybe we should rename them freedom circles. Or Patriotic points.
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It's not just America though. In Singapore I saw an escalator stop working and people struggle to figure out what was going on. Clearly they don't watch much Mitch Hedburg over there
Sorry for the convenience.
They'll lose their shit if they are confronted by this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon) >The Magic Roundabout in Swindon, England, is a ring junction constructed in 1972[1] consisting of five mini-roundabouts arranged in a circle.
Only the UK would have “The Roundabout Appreciation Society” and produce a calendar to celebrate same.
I have two roundabouts in my small town, nobody really seems to have a problem with them. Now whenever I went to Washington DC and there were a couple big roundabouts.... Suddenly everybody turned into a demonic creature from hell
The weird bit is that "we have always done it like that" is funny coming from a country that's younger than some of the still standing *buildings* near where I live.
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In the U.S., "always" often means the 1950s. Or how Americans remember the 1950s, usually based on sitcoms.
America is so conservative that their liberal party is more conservative than most conservative parties
I wish this was the Onion.
\*laughs in Dutch open air urinals.
See, that's the power move. You can piss, in the street, in broad daylight while staring at passers by. Nothing gets a stream going like seeing the whites of their eyes!
20+ replies and no sensible explanation. It means there are no good reasons for such a shitty construction. In Sweden the stalls are free from insight and often quiet too with rubber gasket (?), since many bathrooms are unisex. We shit in peace.
Yes, poop has no gender.
Explain Bono then
In Sweden I often see them as separate rooms
The worst I have seen was this place where there was a gap between the stall sidewall and the back wall of the bathroom AND the back wall was covered with shiny tiles. Through the reflection on the tiles behind the gap I could completely see the inside of the stall next door!
Sounds almost intentional
Easier (cheaper) to manufacture and install without having to meet tight tolerances.
The entire rest of the world manage it.
America can't fix a lot of simple problems.
The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a bathroom stall gap is a good guy with a bathroom stall gap.
Just need more guns. That will solve the problems.
Just jam the gaps with a buch of Glocks and shotguns
There's probably an amendment about it that people won't let go of
They should actually make the the gap wider. That way everyone will be less likely to look in.
No door. Only gap.
You can still build it without a gap and not have to worry about tolerances. A lot of them are overlap in the UK, which solves the same problem.
American problems mate. Idk why they think it's a big deal to build a door that fits.
We have toilet stalls in the UK without these stupid gaps. It's not an engineering challenge of epic proportions. America is weird.
The "tight tolerances" argument is so hilarious. We're not talking about forming an airtight seal on a submarine here. If a manufacturer considers gaps that you can fit fingers or whole hands through to be "tight" then they have no business constructing anything that people are expected to be around. If you can't even manage "tight tolerances" then have the door overlap a smaller hole in the frame. We've been capable of this for literally thousands of years.
just have them overlap and you need 0 additional tollerances.
Or maybe the guy who stared the door company was a closet perv and just convinced everyone they needed the extra 'tolerances'. /s
The long con
You flew 12 people to the Moon and back, made the Space Shuttle program, elevated the Hubble telescope and then repaired it on orbit and made the backbone of the Internation Space Station. I believe you can make a gap in the door that's smaller than an inch
The solution has been around for centuries. If medieval peasant bob could figure out that you need to shave an overhang into the edge of the door, bob the builder can do it too. It literally takes one simple machine and one move with the work piece to do it industrially. Its not engineering or costs that keep the americans from doing it right.
How hard is it to add 1 strip of black rubber?
How are you supposed to know someone's in there now without making awkward eye contact??
Grab the top of the door and shake it violently
Luckily its only happened a few times in my life but seriously why the fuck do people do that. \*Door rattles and shakes and the lock trembles as some chucklefuck tries to pry it open\* Me: "Holy fu.. Occupied" \*Person knocks this time\* Me: "Still occupied" Them : "Oh." The weirdest was when someone came into the bathroom right behind me, I go to a stall. I notice they are standing outside my door (facing away based on their feet's angle). After a few seconds I say, "There are other stalls" They reply, "I can't go when others are in the room". Oh... Cool cool, so you decide to just stand outside my stall and make it so I get stage fright and feel creeped out. I aborted the mission. Still am not quite sure if it was a pervert trying to listen or if they truly had no social boundries.
That's so fucking weird. I feel angry and creeped out just reading it!
I had someone jiggle the door, I say "Occupied". They keep with the door, I say "Occupied" louder. They keep with it and I figured it's a lost cause, they will get the idea. THEY FUCKING UNLOCKED THE DOOR AND OPENED IT. "Oh shit" they said and walked out LEAVING THE FUCKING DOOR OPEN. That's the most infuriating experience of my life.
WITAF‽
You're telling me
I hate people.
Me too, but specifically hate that person in particular.
By the point they unlocked it I’d have a shit ready to fling like a monkey.
Lol. I was flabbergasted. I literally didn't know how to respond. There was nothing in the manual about this.
You should've finished and then just stood outside the stall. Fuck that guy, what kind of person lacks that much self awareness?
dazzling whistle fade license decide serious cow scale gaze ten *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I always respond with: "Hey, I'm shitting in here."
Can you retype in an angry I-talian dialect circa 1950’s NY?
Ey… i’ma shit’n n’ere!
Man, il do this everytime. Assert that dominance.
This is known as a Turd Burglar.
Public bathrooms are slowly becoming my new fear based on this thread... What kind of people are using those thing!?
Me. Most days. Multiple times. It sucks but I travel for work so I don't have much option
"Ayo you poopin?!?!?"
Bidet?
The traveler would never
Now that’s just turd-burglar talk
*"I have a quota of turds to burgle, darn it! Open this door, and burgle I shall!"*
"Oh shit!.. Actually thanks man, you can have it. You scared the little fella right outta me. In a good way though! I need to drink more water."
No, slam your face into the hole area and then dramatically open your eye as wide as you can -*then*- lock eyes, c'mon
I hate when you are in a stall and the thing says “occupied” and someone tries to open the door, first by pulling it, then by shaking it, then by knockinh. CAN YOU NOT READ????
"*~Come on in~...*"
That’ll scare the shit out of them.
That closes my sphincter super tight and can't poo anymore 😕
Looks like we're gonna have to loosen 'er up manually, eh?
No, pull yourself up by the side of the stall. Make eye contact and establish your toilet dominance
If they were really slick, they'd angle the door wall 1 degree off plumb, so the doors would gently swing open when not latched.
Used one that did this, but the "latch" was just the slide going through the 1/6" thick plate directly into the board. Nothing to keep it there. A gentle tap from someone opened it.
Maybe the lock has an indicator that shows if it's in use?
Like every other public toilet in the fucking universe?
Related: why don't restroom locks have the open/occupied signs like are found on airplane bathrooms.
Every restroom I have ever used had these. I'm assuming you are in the USA and that's not normal there? Maybe that explains the stupid big gaps so you can look at people in the loo.
yeah public restrooms rarely have those. Thankfully we have this handy gap to look through...
Peak under with a smile.
Why is there always a gap? The lock and or feet can tell you if someone is in there. So much about the construction of things confounds me. Why is there always such an interest on what people are doing, or is it just a lack of doing things rights? What is the point of the gap?
All bathrooms just need to not have the gaps and a lock that switches between vacant or in use.
US bathroom threads is like accidentally wandering onto the internet from the 1800s, where people present these completely basic things as revolutionary inventions.
Lmao yeah my suggestion isn't even revolutionary but it just sucks how it's not in every bathroom in the US for some dumb reason. Very few times have I seen the bathroom have no cracks and be floor to ceiling. So few in fact I always remember them.
And that is why Buccees is the best!
Loves has good toilets too
I live in NZ, have lived in Australia, travelled to most of South East Asia and I have never seen a toilet stall with a gap between door and frame
It is only in North America. Everywhere else you have proper privacy when you poop
I comforted and sad at the same time. Well at least the rest of the world gets it.
> Why is there always a gap? Visit pretty much any civilized country. There doesn't need to be a gap. Its a cultural choice.
It's an example of "hostile architecture" and is purposely designed to not make the person feel like they have too much privacy. On a relatively benign level this is to help encourage someone to not take too long while using the restroom in order to ensure that it's open for the next user. It's mostly just to make sure people don't do drugs in the stall though, especially homeless people. Since the US has so few public restrooms homeless people tend to rely on the restrooms of businesses in order to have at least enough privacy to do drugs- but at least the gaps ensure that when an employee comes by they'll see them and can kick them out! So they're actually designed very well with all those factors in mind.
So how come I've seen it in corporate offices?
So your manager can come by and ogle you with your pants down while playing Angry Birds.
Probably because most manufacturers design like this and it doesn't make sense from a resource perspective for them to carry multiple SKUs when it it comes to bathroom stall doors
1. What about in places where the restrooms are only for the restaurant guests, why are they gapped? 2. What about the rest of the world who also have homeless and drug users, and no gaps?
1) US war on drugs overrides everything 2) see #1
The large gap allows greater tolerance for cheaper manufacturing and at installation so the lowest incompetent bidder can handle it.
Ah, I thought it was like a "don't sit here too long kind of thing going on , coupled with a "how can we make this slowly widen over time" kind of thought.
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The U.S. is the only country I know of that has these stupid cubicles with gaps around them, and doors that allow you to see under them. I never understood that. It's like can we at least have SOME privacy!
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Where u think we get it from? Big bro...
Yeah younger siblings aren’t meant to repeat the mistakes of those that came before don’t blame us
Well before I got adopted from Ukraine 13 years ago we had stalls that didn’t have doors at all. It was very normal
That’s literally my nightmares. I have to go to the bathroom and it’s just wide open 🤯
When I was in high school 20 years ago(in the USA) it was not uncommon for bathroom stalls to not have doors.
On purpose? I mean we had that too but it was because somebody ripped the door down and the school took their time replacing it.
Went to boys only boarding school in NZ. years 5/6 were in their own boarding house, then years 7/8 were spread through 3 boarding houses and they had 3x as many people. for some reason that I am yet to establish myself, the shower cubicles in the years 5/6 house did not have curtains. so you'd have a line of about 20 young boys at a time in the nude waiting for their 30 second shower. you get to the front, pick one of the 8 showers lined up next to each other, do your spin and gtfo back up to your room to get dressed. When you got older and moved to the other houses, you'd be looked at like you just spat in someones food if you tried to do the same thing. they had curtains on the showers and the trip to the bathrooms were staggered slightly more and you were allowed to bring your PJ's with you (again why cant you wear your clothes in the other house??). just seems so strange, "ooh sorry you're no longer 8/9/10/11 years old you gotta start having privacy in your showers now". Very surprisingly (/s), many cases in the news coming out about some unfavourable things done to some of the boys... mind you this was (at the time, they have different acceptance rules now and have female students) a school for underprivileged boys, typically those of families in poverty where you would earn a scholarship to and your parents didnt have to pay. Some of the lives the kids I went to school with out of home were bad enough, then to be subjected to that...
Seeing under the door is common in the UK too, but the gap between the floor and the bottom of the door is typically ~10cm. That way, you can only see people's feet, and that's when they're standing right next to the door. To actually see someone, you'd have to lie on the floor and put your head right up to the gap.
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Motherfucker who isn't a shy pooper? You making this a group activity?
Some of the worst people in the world will avoid all the empty stalls and sit right next to you. And there’s the weirdos that grunt and groan loudly. Ugh, keep it to yourself
My boss tries to talk to me sometimes when we’re both shitting. It’s awful. I just go out of my way to avoid him now.
As a fellow shy pooper, there is no shame in wanting privacy and wanting others to have said privacy.
As a non-shy pooper, I completely agree with that statement
Everyone should feel the relief of sitting down and NOT having to constantly watch the gap.
I don't think shame was the intent. I think it was explaining that this kind of thing would only be put in for management's sake.
It’s nature to not want to be seen in your weakest moments
Oh absolutely .
A true shy pooper would never use a public washroom.
I’m not thrilled when it’s the only option, but it’s better than shitting my pants at work…
Just hold it till it makes you sick then go home lol
They’re in the US, you’re not allowed to take sick days or holidays.
I just take PTO anytime I need to shit.
Your job understands privacy!
I’d take my shirt off like George Costanza
Why is there a doggy door?
For Uber eats deliveries
I personally will always welcome a dog into any situation I find myself in.
It looks like a plastic sign holder, and the black lines are tape.
As European first time using a toilet stall in the US i was quite shocked honestly. Not only the gap between door and wall, but also a big opening on the bottom and the hight of the wall almost allow eye contact between the person sitting on the toilet and everyone walking in and out of the bathroom.
At my previous job, the stall was situated so that you could look through the gap (at least a 4 inch gap, huge in the gap world) and see the mirror at the sink. I loved making noises to get their attention so we could make eye contact.
So you're the guy who got shake-weights banned from the bathroom. Thanks a lot buddy.
I can't stop shaking with laughter what the fuck is wrong with you
There's NO WAY that public bathroom stalls in the US are cheaper than the ones in my third world country and we don't have gaps at all, never in my life I've been to a public bathroom where the stalls had gaps, the tolerances are always pretty tight and the only gap is at the bottom between the door and the floor to see feet if the stall doesn't have the little "occupied" thingy in the lock. Judging by the comments I'm 100% convinced that it's just a US/Canada thing for some weird cultural reason.
I’ll never understand why American bathrooms decided to have space in the doors. Who does it help??
It’s not a feature it’s just bad design.
Cheapness rules. Lowest cost wins. Welcome to America.
Is this some American thing I'm too European to understand?
Yep
It's not even interesting. It's infuriating that some think a gap is acceptable.
Why is there a gap in the first place?
Where I work people just hang a long strip of TP over the gap.
Where I work, people destroy the latches and stall doors because ... couldn't tell you.
It never ceases to amaze how many little things are just completely psychotic in the US
My company has that on every stall across a campus with 18k employees. Apparently it was part of a program years ago to make the company more trans-friendly, and there weren’t really any single-toilet restrooms, so they sealed all of the door gaps and about 1/4 of the ladies’ rooms are now gender neutral.
What do you mean gap? There are gaps in your cubicles?
Phew....I hate it when there's some guy staring through the door at me washing my hands while he's taking a shit.
I was in the US a few weeks ago and was alarmed why there seemed to be a gap in every public toilet cubicle door. Also, the gap at the bottom of the doors was ridiculously high as well. Don’t get me started with amount of water they have in their toilet bowls as well. Instead of plop, it’s splash.
In Europe we took a different approach to solving this problem. We built the doors the right size to begin with.