How To Lose A Customer In 10 Ways: Public Restrooms
You see it all in public restrooms. Everything. From the grossest heaps of fermenting fecal matter, to slimy multi-colored puke plastered everywhere but the intended target. Using public restrooms is like playing a game of Russian Roulette. You either get a perfectly clean and normal bathroom, or you get some indescribable hell hole that leaves you with lingering bouts PTSD. There’s no in between. Playing restroom roulette isn’t for the faint of heart, and those of us brave enough to use them know all too well the dangers lurking behind any door guarded by a stick figure. And restroom roulette doesn’t discriminate when it comes to who makes playing this game so dangerous. Any place of business. From the grossest fast food restaurants, to brand new dental offices in the nicest part of town. Humans are gross wherever they go, with however much money they have.
Way #1: I’ll start with by far the grossest and longest way, and that’s simply the just plain disgusting public bathrooms and their stalls in particular. There’s a cast of characters responsible for these unimaginable crime scenes, each with their own trademark public art exhibits. There’s the people who lay toilet paper on the seats and leave it for somebody else to clean up. You’re so concerned about your fucking ass skin touching germs, yet it’s perfectly fine leaving me to figure out how I’m gonna chisel off 12 ft of greasy ass paper that’s been heat sealed to the porcelain by a combination of butt sweat, semen, and the fat tub’s body temperature after 45 minutes of heaving and hoeing as he works out whatever log jam last week’s feast created. And your ass cheeks don’t need a table cloth, they’re not eating. It’s because of assholes like you, and yours, that half the time I sit down only to discover there’s no god damn toilet paper to use what it’s intended for in the first fucking place. Quit using up entire rolls making your nests or whatever the hell you’re doing. You also get the people who seem to poop by sneezing it out of their asses? I don’t know what you’re eating but you should really see somebody about that. A good rule of thumb for whether the height of the splatter should be concerning or not, is if it reaches the middle of the bathroom ceiling, you’re probably in the concerning zone. Anything outside the toilet bowl is a good rule of thumb for normal people I’d say. Maybe midway up the back of the lid on special occasions. Who else? Oh you have the brown pee people. Uhh drink some water? It’s free at most places. And how is pee even that brown? I don’t have diarrhea that dark. That can’t be healthy. And you can’t forget about the pee all over the seat people. Do you pee out of your ass? You can’t aim a stream of liquid through a target the size of a basketball rim? Really?
Way #2: Being stingy mother fuckers when it comes to basic bathroom necessities, like toilet paper and working appliances like the automatic soap and paper towel dispensers, if god forbid you even get paper towels nowadays. Oh my god not that. Oh no. The trees. Yeah like I wanna wipe my hands in my shirt when I’m on a hot date. That’s sexy. Now I gotta walk back to the table looking like the bus boys ganged up and gave me a swirly because your wall mounted leaf blower is broken and you save your weak conscience and about 18 bucks a month by not buying paper towel. Just give me something for Jesus’s sake. Jesus. Whatever happened to the days of those dudes in the bathroom? Wearing suits and giving you mints and warm towels and shit. Just standing there, smelling your shit. I always felt bad about that. Sometimes you have to go no matter what. There could be a gentleman in a cheap fitting pinstripe, pimp daddy looking boss man suit standing there with a storefront’s array of different colognes, soaps, and creams… And he’s gotta stand there waiting while I extract the meat demon that’s been baking in my gut’s oven for four days. Sorry dude. But I miss the good old days.
Way #3: What I call a ‘broken bathroom’. Nothing works. Not even the mirror for god’s sake. The paper towel dispenser is either empty, jammed, or manually operated and I’m not fingering that germ catcher to find out how exactly. Of course the toilet paper is out. Those things hold like 40 rolls, yet they always seem to be empty. The automatic soap dispenser squirts out 6 gallons of blue jizz after not a peep the first 15 times you waved at it like a moron. Of course the garbage is full, you find out as you watch your balled up toilet paper bounce off the landfill sized heap that outgrew it’s bin three days ago, smacking the grimy floor with a wet thud. Great. Now you’re either an asshole, or you’re eating the germs from someone’s asshole when you chew your finger nails later. And of course every toilet is clogged. That’s a given. Yet you still do the walk of shame, bumping open every stall door one at a time as you get a front row view of what clogged them each. At least they’re kind enough to leave you a sign letting you know one of the sink’s hot water knobs isn’t working. Thanks.
Way #4: Having your bathrooms at the end of a maze harder to navigate than the hardest corn varieties. I have irritable bowel syndrome. That means I have to shit right now. Not in 45 minutes when, like Lewis and Clark, I’ve been able to navigate the vast, unincorporated territories that are the hallways and back patios behind your restaurant. Next time have a map on the menu. Or your own Sacagawea. I shouldn’t have to shine a flashlight down a hallway and call out like I’m home alone and scared somebody else is in the house with me. And just a suggestion for all you hipster/vegan/gluten free/whatever the hell else is cool nowadays restaurants… If your “food” moves my bowels faster than a bullet train tuned like an R34 Skyline, I suggest you get the biggest, brightest neon restroom sign you can find and hang that sucker high for all to see.
Way #5: If your hand soap is smellier than the shit I just took, washing my hands with it is kind of pointless. And I don’t wanna hear the germ police on here pleading with me to make sure that after every dump I scrub the skin off my hands, scalding them under boiling water as I sing the abc’s forwards and backwards six times over. That ain’t gonna happen. If there’s nothing visible on my fingers clearly they didn’t touch poop.
Way #6: Those stupid timer sinks that make you play Whac-A-Mole just to wash the fucking soap off your hands. See that’s what I get for washing my hands. Who the hell invented that faucet anyway? What the fuck was their problem? And could you set the timer for any longer? God forbid they stay on long enough for me to whac it on and then actually get my hand back in the water.
Way #7: If your stall is too narrow for a toilet, a normal sized adult male probably isn’t going to be able to sit down and spread out like he needs to. You ever sit down in a public restroom and the toilet paper dispenser is literally just in your lap? Like you’re literally holding it like a newborn. Like it’s so in your personal space you can’t poop and scroll Twitter without detaching it from the wall first. Like you get the point.
Way #8: Baby changing stations. Yeah I said it. I don’t need to imagine some nasty diarrhea diaper leaving its smeary shit graffiti everywhere while I’m trying to relieve myself. This should be a relaxing time. And those things creep me out. Get rid of them. Change your stupid kids in the car or something. Idk. Aren’t diapers basically wearable litter boxes? Who cares. Change them when you get home.
Way #9: Doors that don’t lock. So help me God. If I go into a stall and lock the door, only for some insanely manly biker looking werewolf dude to come barging in two minutes later and now we both know what my pooping face looks like. And if the lock to the restroom door requires some genius IQ level to figure out how it works, maybe leave us a note or get a normal locking door. I shouldn’t have to stand there with my ass cheeks clenched and legs trembling from holding in the brown flood as I fumble with a lock that’s more complicated than any I’ve seen in a bank heist movie.
Way #10: Automatic toilets. Do they really need to flush that hard? I get you need them to move a lot of timber, but there’s no reason that thing needs more horsepower than your grandpa’s corvette. No use washing my hand’s when the rest of me is covered in the flying fecal matter that settled like falling ash.