public restroom tips
Two things I’ve been meaning to post for a long time… Nothing profound, just a couple tips for you to absorb, in case someday they happen to come in handy. Feel free to post your own tips in the comments (please keep it reasonably clean/relevant though)!
1. Temporarily disabling automatic-flushing
I hate automatic-flushing toilets. When I was traveling a lot for business a couple years ago, I was annoyed by automatic toilets on many occasions. I’d sometimes roll my suitcase into a bathroom stall, hang my laptop bag on the stall door’s hook, urinate, then grab my laptop bag and wheel the suitcase out. During this simple process, in which I clearly only used the toilet one time, the stupid thing would usually flush between 4-7 times. Yes, sometimes it flushed 7 times just for pee. A little excessive, if you ask me.
Worse yet is when taking a small child to a public bathroom that has automatic-flushing toilets. The sensors often do not notice the child, especially when the kid leans over to get TP or moves their head AT ALL. So then you have a little kid sitting on a toilet which suddenly makes extremely loud noises and may even splash a little water on them. Not fun. So, at some point I figured out a simple solution:
Cover the sensor temporarily while using the toilet, then uncover it when you’re done. I’ve done this at least 15-20 times, now, and it has always worked flawlessly. I put a tiny bit of saliva on one square of toilet paper and stick it on the sensor. When I (or my kid) is done, I take the square off and drop it in the toilet.
The only thing I don’t like about this is that I’m putting my spit/germs on the wall. But, honestly, I don’t think anybody ever needs to touch the sensor, and if they do, they are probably cleaning it or fixing it, which means they should come prepared to mess with a public toilet, and my spit would probably be the least of their concerns. My wife suggested wetting a little bit of paper towel on your way into the bathroom, instead, and that sounds like a pretty good idea as well.
2. Making a toilet flush when it’s being stubborn
This will probably work in very few instances, but it usually works in my current office’s restrooms. If the toilet is a professional/industrial type (not sure what they’re really called.. the kind you find in public bathrooms, not the type people generally have in their homes), with the handle that sticks out the side from visible pipes.
These toilets have a very powerful flushing mechanism, but sometimes, for some reason, they do not fully empty the bowl. I’ve found that–at least with these toilets at work–if I hold the handle down (rather than just pushing it and letting it go when it starts flushing), it tries harder.
This might work in other, similar, public toilets. I haven’t had to try it anywhere else since I figured this out.
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January 23rd, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Love this post– will use your tip about the disabling the automatic flushing!!! I hate that. It is especially annoying when changing clothes in a stall (On my 25 hour business trips, I do find myself changing clothes in airport bathrooms)
January 24th, 2007 at 9:17 am
I wasn’t going to say anything… but… I find this extremely petty. If a company wants to have a stupid system that wastes their water and costs them more money… let them.
political jab: Conservatives will no doubt tout that “market forces” will make these flushers go away on their own (I think their assumptions aren’t 100% right.)
But anyway, Why should you go out of the way, TOUCHING A TOILET, to help some lazy corporation’s bottom line?
They probably never clean the sensor because they assume people wont touch it, but putting saliva on it is just gross. What if the next person WANTS it to flush and has to deal with some spitty toilet paper over the sensor?.
I have had auto-flush exclusively at work for over 2 yrs and have had fewer than 5 excess flushings.
But even then, so what? OMG a little water got on me. Not the water! They have bidets in most of the world, getting a little [clean] water on your ass is considered desireable by the average human being, and not really worth the effort to avoid when you are presumably wiping your ass anyway (and have toilet paper in reach).
Of course if it’s dirty water that would be bad, but if it’s dirty water why would you not flush the toilet right when you get in the stall, or go to another stall?
—
Now, the part about holding the flusher down to get it to “flush more” is totally true, and I’m irked that people don’t seem to realize the OBVIOUSNESS of this (i.e. partial poop leftover in a shared hotel room toilet).
The same thing is true for elevators. Sometimes you have to hold the button down until the doors are completely closed. People just leave because they are too stupid to hold the button down, and assume the elevator is “broken” (it’s just in service mode).
I hold the button down and enjoy my own personal elevator. . .
January 24th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Clint: I’m not concerned with saving companies money. Toilets flushing repeatedly are annoying to me, and scary to small children.
I do not leave the square of toilet paper over the sensor, so nobody has to deal with that. If someone wants to do a manual flush, they push the button NEXT TO the sensor — they don’t have to touch whatever tiny dried saliva spot was left when I removed TP square.
If I were to leave a big loogie on the sensor that prevented it from auto-flushing, that would be gross. But that is not what I do. When I am ready for it to flush, I remove the TP square and drop it in the toilet, and then the thing auto-flushes. If it did not, I might go so far as to wipe the sensor real quick with a dry TP square.
My intention is not to cripple the automatic flushing system, it is just to temporarily disable it!
As far as toilet water splashing on my butt — I’d rather avoid it. I don’t care how clean the toilet looks; who knows what has been in that public toilet bowl before, or when it was last cleaned. Unless I walk into a stall and find a freshly cleaned bowl (i.e. lysol-ish stuff is still in the water), I always assume a public toilet is a biohazard.
Actually, that’s another thing I hate about automatic flushers.. When I take the time to clean off a wet toilet seat before I use it–whether the wetness is from pee or an overzealous splashy flusher–I do not want the damn thing to flush again during that brief moment when I’m turning around to sit down!
—
As for elevators, yes, holding the button down can be useful. At my work, sometimes the button just will not light up. I have to sit there and hold it/push it again/hold it/push it repeatedly, sometimes, before it will get the message. But the key seems to be holding it in just right.
Supposedly, some elevators even have an express mode that avoids stopping at other floors, when you push the “close door” button and your desired floor number button in at the same time. I tried that for a while, here at work, and truly believed it to work, until one day it didn’t. :) Coincidentally, I managed to have 20+ elevator rides down 4 floors by myself, over the course of a few weeks.. I don’t bother holding it in the whole time, anymore, since it did not work one time. I don’t want to be an elevator hog on purpose, I just wanted to know if it actually worked.
January 24th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
I don’t leave nice comments when I disagree with something, so my apologies, but… any kid who is scared of a toilet flush needs some serious adjustment or I think they would have issues in the future. Wuss issues. They need to learn to deal. I’ve never heard of such a thing.
=
At work, though — funny — i couldn’t get the auto-flush to flush! I tried walking towards it and back a couple times to no avail. I think it’s rude to leave stuff in the toilet, but I don’t generally touch them either. So I left it this time.
The water that splashes on your butt is fresh. Unless there’s poop in the toilet when you walk in. And generally toilets are cleaned daily by law.
I have managed to only get a few drops on me.
=
Hahahah about the express mode!
January 24th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
I used to be afraid of flushing toilets. Specifically I was afraid of the “Toilet Monster” which I feared would pop out at me and eat me when I flushed it.
I can accept that I had “Wuss Issues” for sometime (particularly when vomit was involved), but at the moment, I think I came out pretty darn well.
January 25th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Really?? I’ve never heard of that particular fear. I thought part of toilet training was… learning that a toilet is a toilet and not a monster.
January 26th, 2007 at 9:17 am
Clint: Public toilets, with their industrial-strength, super-hydraulic-vacuum-assisted flushing mechanisms, are much louder than regular household toilets.
You’ve left me no choice but to compare a child being scared of a spontaneous automatic megaflush, with your reaction to the loud noises/bright lights outside your house when that van knocked out a telephone pole/exploded/etc.
(For those who have not read this story, it’s an interesting read! http://clintjcl.wordpress.com/2007/01/12/fatality-and-exploisions-by-our-driveway/).
I quote, “I thought it was a fucking nuke. I was terrified…”
So, maybe a few “wuss issues” in one’s early (~2-6) years–such as being startled/concerned when the innocent-enough-looking toilet you’re sitting on suddenly (and all by itself) flushes with a sound much like some kind of combination toilet-garbage disposal-vacuum cleaner–might help one to get used to loud noises, and accustomed to fears/how to deal with fears, and allow one to think more rationally when startling noises/events happen later in life, and void jumping to nuclear-bomb-type conclusions.
ZING!
January 26th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
WOW!
I’m so very glad Wordpress has comments feed. I would have never expected such a post about public restrooms to take this direction. On my own, I probably never would have checked back.
If I was my father, I would get a license plate that would read, “GRTUVM”–
“Google Reader, Thank You Very Much”
January 27th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Which of these 2 things are more alike?
The bright light of a nuclear explosion, which makes all electronic components fail, followed by the sound of an explosion .. compared to .. the bright light of an electrical explosion, which happened to make all electronic components fail, followed by the sound of an explosion.
-OR-
A swirling whirlpool of water in a toilet .. compared to .. a furry evil monster with sharp teeth and a big mouth that wants to eat you.
I dunno man… I’d venture to say the 1st, and don’t think its going to make better conclusions in the future because of worse ones in the present.
Now…
the real issue at hand…
the real thing that should be complained about…
ladies and gentlemen…
AUTOMATIC SINK FAUCETS.
Now there’s something that ticks me off. Sometimes i have to shake my hands with 10 times the energy I want to expend just to get it to stay on, and it never stays on long enough for me to finish washing, and since you can’t turn it on a few seconds ahead of time, there’s no way to warm the water up…
Now there’s a real problem! :)
January 30th, 2007 at 9:55 am
Hey, I never defended the toilet monster. My kids have never been afraid of a toilet monster. So your comparison is not valid at all.
I’m talking about a little kid, who has to hang onto the toilet seat in order to perch themselves up there because their feet can’t touch the ground, being startled when the toilet decides to flush itself, without any warning, and with a sound that at least seems louder than typical manual-flush public toilets.
My kids are/were not afraid of toilets flushing in other stalls, or of toilets that they (or I) flushed manually. It’s the surprise aspect that makes it so startling.
Thankfully, I have a technique that works for me to avoid dealing with trigger-happy automatic flushers. I actually read a forum this mornig where moms keep post-it notes in their purses to cover those sensors. That’s kinda cool, and more sanitary than my TP-spit technique. But I don’t carry a purse, and still maintain that my technique is not that bad, because there’s no reason anyone should need to touch the sensor, unless they are doing toilet repair, and probably have much nastier things to worry about than a spot of saliva residue (which I do try to avoid leaving behind).
—
Now, as for automatic faucets, I have never tried covering a faucet sensor with a piece of TP/paper towel scrap, but I may try that next time I encounter automatic faucets that are particularly oblivious to the presence of my hands. :)
January 30th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
It seems with flushers, the issue is flusshing too much — but with faucets, the issue is they don’t “faucet” enough….. I keep having to move my hands wildly.. ugh. Putting a towel scrap decreases the sensor. I need something to increase it. Prism?
January 30th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
hmm. it depends on how the faucet sensor works. If its only criteria is whether your hands are in its line of sight, then I would expect the paper towel scrap idea to work.
Usually, when I’ve encountered automatic faucets that were difficult to use, it was because the sensor was either placed somewhere or angled in such a way that they couldn’t see my hands, which were in normal hand-washing position under the faucet.
There’s often a timing aspect to automatic faucets as well (i.e. detect hands => output water => detect lack of hands => continue a couple seconds => if hands are still not detected, stop water output).
So, the waving of your hands has to be frequent enough so that when you move your hands away from the sensor to actually wash them (you know… the main reason you were using the sink?), you still move them back into the sensor’s view before it actually shuts off.
Based on this, if it will run continuously as long as your hands are in its line of sight (which may not be in the water stream), then the paper towel scrap ought to work!
Theory: Maybe they place the sensors off to the side so that the actual stream of water doesn’t trigger the sensor. This idea may not be news to some people, but I never really thought about it before, and I think this makes some sense.
If your automatic faucets are just evil and possessed, though, and require fancy hand-dancing that is unrelated to the washing hands vs. tripping sensor dilemma, then you’re on your own. A sledge hammer might be a better bet. Or, as you said, maybe some kind of prism. :)
If you can figure out a prism design that works, and then manage to miniaturize it to the point where it can still be effective without taking up too much space, maybe you could market a watch band attachment or a ring that uses that miniature prism. Quick, patent that before someone else does! This will be google-able in a few minutes! :)
January 30th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Well, I can move my hands to position X which causes it to be on. But staying in position X wont keep it on. It times out. It seems that it senses the movement (delta) more than whether you are simply there or not. So yea, my normal hand-dance isn’t enough. I don’t really move a lot when I wash my hands. Not as much as it wants me to. It’s metaphorically akin to automatic doors that you have to STOMP to get to open.
LOL @ “this will be google-able in a few minutes” .. hahaha
January 31st, 2007 at 8:57 am
Update…… when I held my hands perfectly still, it worked and never went off! It’s like…… the whole time I’ve been doing it wrong? I thought it was a motion sensor, not a proximity sensor. Interesting indeed.
April 16th, 2007 at 5:57 am
[…] for that matter) at work, and about some ways that I deal with public restroom annoyances (the comments on that one were more interesting than the post itself!). But yesterday, at Chuck E Cheese’s, I […]
February 11th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Heh heh. Have you ever heard of the show “Jon & Kate Plus 8″? It’s on TLC and about a family with 2 six year olds and 6 3 year olds.
Anyway, they independently discovered your means of disabling the automatic flushing. :)