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Bathroom Behavior…

Filed under: Rants — Bill Eisenhauer at 5:42 pm on Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Nothing entertains me more than bathroom behaviour gone awry.  This post is for the men since those bathrooms are the only ones I have experience with.

Would someone please explain the following odd behaviors to me?

  1. Washing your hands before going to the bathroom, but not after.  What?  So you can’t touch yours with the germs you randomly encounter, but you’re quite willing to leave your worst ones behind for the rest of us?
  2. Flushing a urinal during midstream.  I’m not sure I understand the purpose for an incremental flush.  I further don’t understand when there isn’t a flush to bookend the experience.  Could it be splatter management?  If so, I appreciate it since I’m next door sometimes.
  3. Empty urinal avoidance.  Why do some guys bypass the urinal and go for the stall?  Let’s face it, most of us are pretty lazy and a stall brings with it the possibility of having to lift the lid or close the door.  As I’ve mentioned before, some people have trouble with the former and create even more egregious sins.  I can maybe understand this is you’re a homophobe male at a gay bar wheeling up to a mirrored urinal with no divider in between.  Otherwise, I don’t get it.

Of course, someone is probably blogging at this moment on how weird the guy is who walks straight in, addresses the urinal, pees, flushes once, washes hands, and then leaves. 

Man if I’m doing it wrong, please somebody let me know.  I’m almost 41 years old and need to get it figured out while there is still time.

4 Comments »

45

Comment by Mike

September 14, 2005 @ 9:21 am

You left out the spitting in the urinal before commencing the main vein drain.

Perhaps you will recall this other bathroom oddity:

http://www.samoht.com/weblog/gemcast.rb/Personal_Mythology/booger.html

46

Comment by Bill

September 14, 2005 @ 9:53 am

Yeah, I’m aware of that behavior, but since I sometimes do that myself, I didn’t mention it. I guess I don’t consider it that odd.

And I believe I may have discussed this or posted on this in the past. In this post, I was trying to go for new observed behavior.

So are you an incremental flusher? I’ve already got a stereotype for such people and you seem to fit it. :)

47

Comment by Mike

September 14, 2005 @ 10:15 am

Not an incremental flusher, nor a spitter. My theory is the only reason you don’t think spitting is odd, is because you do it. Now, can you explain *why* you do it?

48

Comment by Michael Sykes

September 14, 2005 @ 5:45 pm

Okay, here goes:

1) Washing hands before using the bathroom, but not after - there is simply no rational explanation for this, and these people are asses (to quote your bother blog post you link to)

2) The best reason for a mid-stream flush is that for some people it facilitates peeing. I don’t know if it’s the sound of rushing water, or merely the muffling of ambient noise, but it can be conducive to a good flow of pee. Even midstream, it can prevent the stream from prematurely drying up. I think we’ve had a discussion on our forums about this before, but I can’t track it down

3) There are lots of reasons to avoid an empty urinal. Proper urinal etiquette often dictates this, and even fear or somebody else subsequently not using proper etiquette. You should not also discount people with minor cases of paruresis (http://www.paruresis.org/) who may be unable to pee at a urinal.

Michael Sykes
President
International Center for Bathroom Etiquette
http://www.icbe.org/

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