You know outside of the US most countries bathrooms stalls actually work / fit / don’t have peekaboo gaps?
Yes, and we’re incredibly envious of it every time it comes up :(
Al I thought this was a reference to the Greenland MP (I think?) I heard on NPR this morning. He was asked if he thinks the US Government is fascist and he said “if you see a piece of wood with hinges on it, you start to ask if its a door” or something like that
Every time what comes up? Your peekaboo?
¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯
ಠ_ಠ
Peekapoo*
In a lot of public stalls in Japan, the outer end of the door is rounded. And the wall it connects to when closed is concaved. So even though there’s a gap to allow the door to open and close freely, there no direct line of sight.
That sounds like it would cost 5¢ more to manufacture and install. Won’t someone think of the shareholders?
It’s crazy how so many things like this just add up to a shitty life experience in general… Like every single product we use regularly has had its features and design strengths pared down year after year until we’re left with a thing that barely does the things it originally did, and it somehow costs more than ever.
If it’s just one or two things, it’s annoying. But when it’s literally everything, it just makes life shit. Capitalism has ruined this planet.
That sounds awesome. Love cool designs like that.
Don’t most doors just close against the frame so there’s no line of sight without the need for the cool design?
I don’t know about ‘a lot’ but these are definitely in recently-renovated stations and buildings, at least in areas with high traffic. I definitely still see many that are only vaguely better than the US outside of Tokyo and the other big cities.
Peekaboo gaps exist outside the states don’t gaslight our readers. Urinals in Heathrow are just a fucking trough you’re supposed to piss in like you’re at a Red Sox game.
Public restrooms in Britain at least aren’t any more enlightened than those in the States
Apologies if you feel I was gaslighting.
I’ve never experienced Heathrow so can’t comment.
I would argue from ‘my’ experience UK bathroom’s seem more enlightened but your own experience may vary.
Haha you’re fine I was being playful
Other than the urinals (and that’s a common thing, just a big trough with no dividers instead of multiple urinals) it’s not that different.
👍
Please tell me they dump huge buckets of ice into the troughs at Heathrow.
At least the door overlaps the gap.
What’s up with a trough?
Like instead of a urinal with dividers between it there’s just a trough
Yes. I’m very familiar with the both the kind on the floor where you have to stand in someone else’s piss and the kind bolted to the wall. I’ve never seen them as a problem, til the comment I originally replied to.
What, is everybody else suddenly just cool with airing their dicks out together? What’s the deal with this? I’m queer and it even puts me off. I’m not looking for a peek, I just wanna take a leak. In the States we have some privacy, we at least put little dividers up. But I saw that shit all over the UK. London, Midlands, York.
.most US baseball stadiums I’ve been to are using troughs. They are very much present in the US.
But not normal-ass bathrooms in side-of-the-highway gas stations! When you’re expecting several thousand drunk losers to piss together in harmony, sure. That’s different. But that’s not what I’m talking about, I’m talking about public restrooms meant foe like 3 or 4 urinals that are replaced by a trough for no discernable reason.
“nice watch”
“Hey! This guy isn’t peeing, he’s just holding his dick!!” Lol
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America? America.
The rest of the world somehow manages to make doors the size of the frame that go pretty much to the floor.
Just the USA, not all of America
In America, the reason is basically “religion”. There are architectural standards which designers refer to for guidance, and the dude who did the architectural standard for restrooms was super hardcore religious. His standard called for big gaps in all the seams, to prevent people from masturbating in the stalls. Basically, he wanted people to be able to peek into stalls, as a sort of modesty check. And eventually, it just became accepted as normal, even though everyone (including Americans who were born and raised with them as the standard) hates the huge gaps.
In modern day, they’re mostly done to deter drug use. I guess the reasoning is similar, with the large gaps intended to allow people to peek into the stalls and see if someone is doing drugs.
If the goal is to allow observation, what’s the point in having doors and cubicles at all?
For what it’s worth regardless of how it started, it’s now enforced by ADA as an accessibility compliance issue, so that a wheelchair users feet can get under the stall door so they can get close enough to reach the latch. Seems like a stretch to me but I’m not a wheelchair user
Sure that explains the bottom gap, but the side gaps are the issue. I’ve never made eye contact with a grown man that’s crawled under my stall. I have made eye contact with someone walking by the stall door through the door crack.
I’ve never made eye contact with a grown man that’s crawled under my stall.
Oh god, for some reason I just pictured this but in the style of the artwork of Junji Ito. Nightmare fuel.
Yeah that’s a really good point, one of the bathrooms at my work is particularly egregious and I’m about to buy and install a privacy thing to cover the gap at this point, there’s a legit 2" gap between the wall and the stall, and it’s right by the door to the bathroom so it’s inevitable that you’ll make eye contact with someone as they’re walking out, so that stall never gets used and instead the wheelchair accessible stall next to it is always used
If there’s a coat hanger on the inside of the door, sometimes hanging a big coat (or something else) can cover the gaps. I’ve done it unintentionally.
I’m not sure what kinda gymnastics the wheelchair user’s got to be doing to get on the shitter once they’ve rolled themselves into a stall backwards… Or why it’s only after a shit that they can’t use doors
once they’ve rolled themselves into a stall backwards…
I think ADA also requires handicapped stalls to be larger so they don’t have to do this.
Some stalls are tiny, and in old construction there’s not a lot you can do with out major renovations. I’m sure the extra leg room is appreciated by taller folks, or if you can’t really bend your lower legs in towards you.
source?
I think it’s because it’s a modular system that is cost effective, durable and repairable.
You can do the same with dimensions that fit together without gaps
I disagree. If you can manufacture it I can try to install it though.
It’s called a “door”.
Door? I hardly know her!
Are you saying US-american table saws can’t be more precise than 2.5cm (an inch)?
I wouldn’t try a table saw on one of those steel panels
Yeah, here in Germany we usually have kinda big (30cm or so) openings at the bottom and at the top, but it’s impossible to accidentally look through those due to their position.
The side openings of the doors are usually completely closed or it’s a very small slit, you definetly cannot look through them.
I think it’s meant to stop people from shooting up and/or fucking and/or falling asleep and/or dying in stalls.
It is fucking annoying though.
Why not let people fuck though?
Because they invariably never clean up after themselves…
But mostly, in the US, because sex is verboten and more dangerous than literal gun violence.
Just put anti-homeless spikes on the toilet seats
That’s false.
I travel a lot for my job, maybe fifty different countries the past 5 or 6 years, and I’ve never seen toilet doors as silly and poorly-designed as US ones, except in places where they’re just making do with what they have.
I didn’t travel as much as you (far from it)
But in every contry I’ve ever been there were toilet doors reaching the ground and floating ~20cm over it in about equal amounts
Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, France, South Korea, Japan were all essentially private booths. Should be standard.
UK was a bit of a cluster, Philippines had doors sometimes, Italy was almost like America at least around Florence when I was there 20 years ago
This is absolutely by design, and it is so users can be provided the absolute minimum of Privacy-ishtm, but also explicitly so that management can easily verify if a stall is occupied in case any poors/junkies are camping out in there.
It’s also so that public bathroom facilities can be spray-down, and you can wedge a brush in the gaps easily without there being crevices for mold/mildew and other… substances… to remain in.
… except the recently renovated bathrooms at the Denver Public Library have individual locking shit-shacks with communal sinks. It’s not like junkies avoid the DPL, they have a box of Narcan bolted to the outside of the building.
Yes that makes sense
You seem to be misattributing the causes of homelessness with public restroom design, though, which are two different things. It’s an arms race if anything.
Idk maybe you live somewhere where there are a lot more problems with public toilets than I do
Edit: who’s mad in this thread lol
I’m not attributing anything to anything, I am just stating an established fact as to why public bathroom stalls are designed that way. If you want to stick motives on people, find their original designers.
and besides, the purpose of a system is what it does
It’s for surprise genital examinations to ensure you’re not trans /s
Does anyone else remember that very brief window where places like highway oases were putting in stalls where the door and walls only went up about halfway to the ceiling, making it so that if you were taking a dump, everyone could just watch you from the chest up?
Did people just slowly turn to the other people to make eye contact while blastin a dook?
It was a long time ago, my memory is hazy, but I walked in and walked right back out.
Verses Mode, Free-For-All pooping.
Battleshits.
“You sunk my battleshit!”
Sheesh, I just imagine imagine happening to walk past around the time some hairy slob is standing up to wipe his ass.
Thankfully I must have avoided whatever business were doing this.
However, I have had the experience of attending schools that had weird urinal designs.
There was one where the urinals looked like regular toilets but without tanks or lids. They also didn’t have dividers and were placed in a position where anyone walking in the bathroom or using the sink got a full view.
There were other schools that had the “trough.” Just a six foot long piss bucket.
hah! I went to military boarding high school and the old, OLD dividers were like that, no door. These were so old they were made of that black slate like an old school lab bench. Luckily I spent only one semester doing the “poop with friends” before they installed standard dividers.
US moment
