Tuesday, August 15, 2006

The Men's Toilet

Okay not a pleasant subject – that is rather the point. Why is it that people – especially people who are supposedly maintaining public facilities think that it is acceptable if men’s toilets are not cleaned?

I mean it is not like it is any particular toilet. From two-bit cafes to gleaming corporate headquarters they are always a mess. Wet floors, multiply non-functioning soap dispensers, no paper towels, toilet bowls last cleaned in 1987, urinals full of chewing gum, the list is endless. Is it because they assume men like things messy? Or is it because men don’t complain?

Decor

Decor nonwithstand, there is ingrain dirt. Nobody, ever, cleans men’s toilets properly. Usually decor is white or white and brown tiles, with chrome taps.

Occasionally, you will come across the “trendy” bathrooms, which have frosted glass doors to cubicles and polished steel trays full of pebbles as sinks. They may also go all continental and have holes in the floor to crap in. Urinals will be steel plates on the wall with a grilled over gutter under your feet so you can see what you’ve passed flowing beneath you. This will be filthy too, but with the added disadvantage of being so trendy as to be unusable.

Urinals

Usual there is an unidentified puddle beneath them, that looks just shallow enough that you can stand in it safely but in fact is just deep enough to seep into your shoes. You try and convince yourself that it is water from the flush pipe, but it probably isn’t. Somebody usual has urinated all over the floor and wall or the urinal is blocked by accumulated chewing gum and it overflows – often just at the point of no return when you are urinating, forcing you to jump back, urinating all over the floor.

See above for the the trendy places.

Toilet Bowls

Somebody has always been there first and made a mess of it. Even if you enter with the cleaner coming out, it is beyond hope.
Cigarette burns in plastic seats seem the favourite. And 50% of the time it is obviously somebody who has been on a week-long curry n’ real ale festival was in there ten minutes ago. Often they have forgotten to flush.

Toilet Paper

Check before you start, as it will not be out, but will have only two and a half sheets length left of single ply of the cheap stuff. That or it is reams of the tracing paper you thought only schools used, that is more likely to cut than to wipe.
You may try and get some paper towels if the toilet paper has run out.

Paper towels

There will be a dispenser. It will be bust, or nobody can be bothered to load it, so the paper towel or roll is left on top of it. Hence, the towels are scattered all over the place, and those that are not are sodden from people with wet hands trying to pick them up.

Taps and Sinks

The sinks are always small and have no plug. There will be two taps – mixers are for sissies. So you have a choice: if there is any hot water at all, scold your hand off or getting it so cold that you spend hours afterwards trying to get feeling back in it.
You may find a separate hot water heater with a third tap, for hot water, this will not work at all, or deliver a tiny dribble of water that will be icy, just until your about to give up, then will go blister hot for just long enough to burn you.

Soap

If there is any at all it will of an odd colour originally but is now ingrain with dirt and grim as to be mainly black. There may be dispensers on the walls, but usually they will be empty, or contain some pink stuff that is supposedly soap but is stuff that just sticks to your hands and does not come off. If you dry your hands with the paper towels, bits of it will stick to hands for hours.
Occasionally there will be pump action soap dispensers. When you try and work them, they will always not work for two pumps, then will suddenly spurt out at an odd angle all over your arm. Again this stuff will not come off.

Hand Dryers

These are automatic hand chapping devices. To get them to work properly will always require twice as much time as it would take to just shake them repeatedly outside the window. The timer on button press ones will require you to press the button twice, wetting your hands all over hand on the wet button. Sensor ones, will need you to hold your hands so close to the nozzle without moving, that one small part of your hand will burn and the rest remain wet.

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