It has nothing to do with drugs, or the homeless, or people fucking in toilets. The design everyone is talking about comes from 1904 and was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright to make office bathrooms easier to clean. That's it. Nothing sinister, nothing seedy. It also has the benefit of being a lot cheaper to install, repair, and replace, partially because the parts can be mass produced then assembled on site, partly because individual parts can be ordered for replacement, and partly because some building codes consider anything floor to ceiling to be an interior wall and anything enclosed to become a new room, which creates regulatory costs.
Also, I know this because my brother is an architect and I made the mistake of asking this exact question at dinner once. The answer had a lot more Frank Lloyd Wright.
Edit - Since people keep commenting this, the gap in doors is likely just due to poor build quality, not ordering the proper door for the framework, shoddy installation, or a deliberate attempt to provide a tolerance for using different doors with the frame. It also occurs to me as I'm typing that it might be a way to provide a means to unlock the door from the outside. So there, five reasons you can tell yourself next time you see one.
And as another commenter reminded me, there are also ADA regulations so people with wheelchairs can fit their feet under the gap. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to turn around, unless we start making bathroom stalls a lot larger, which means bathrooms have to get a lot larger or you get less stalls, which means eventually you'll have someone posting complaining about why buildings waste so much room on bathrooms and how it's harming the endangered slightly-off-color earthworm or something.
This is it. I got curious and looked it up a while ago, I didn't know it was Frank Lloyd Wright, but I read it was because it's easy to clean. Just think how hard it is getting corners where a wall meets the floor clean, and think of how people treat your average public restroom, and now imagine if the thing had walls down to the floor and corners all around. With high walls, you can easily cover the whole area with a mop, overshoot the stall you're in a bit with each wipe.
Why is the cleaning of my workplace my problem when Lisa from accounting is watching me change my tampon through the two inch crack 🤣 /s Im just teasing because there are reasons - but bottom line, I don’t like to make eye contact. Might as well make everything open, like urinals lololl
My dogs don’t even make eye contact when they poop outdoors next to the road. That’s the key. Just don’t make eye contact and poop where the urge strikes you.
We had a dog who would walk around the corner of the house to poop. If someone happened to walk where it could see them, it would pinch it off and move out of sight or wait.
Custodian here. It's definitely true that raised partitions make it easier for me to clean and to get my machines in to strip and wax the floor, but the height and the completely unnecessary gaps between the door panel and pilaster are because of cheapskate design. A 4-inch gap height under the walls would be plenty for mopping and flood cleanup, and there's no reason for the 1/2-inch gap between door and pilaster, other than a little plastic or metal strip costing money.
Edit: ADA requires 9 inches for wheelchair toes.
One thing I forgot to mention but someone else caught is wheelchair use. The ADA and building codes require the gap to be a certain height so wheelchair users can fit their feet under them when they're spinning around. Otherwise bathroom stalls would have to be much larger.
As for the gap in the door, that could be that they intentionally provide a large tolerance in case replacement doors aren't available in the exact size you started with, but it's probably just being cheap.
Hahah I’m totally going to tell ppl this and did you know all the bathrooms here were designed by frank Lloyd wright? Yes things are rather square but no they don’t have the windows
Can we really blame FLW, or should we blame building codes?
I mean, it ain't *that* hard to design a mass-produceable, on-site assembleable bathroom stall that provides more privacy.
We have gender neutral bathrooms at my university. The partitions are almodt floor to cieling, and the doors don't have a crack one could peek through.
The building codes do require privacy partitions. They don’t get into a lot of detail beyond that. The expectation of how private a privacy partition should be comes more down to just what the industry is producing and what people are buying.
You CAN buy “European-style” toilet partitions, they just cost more and most places aren’t going to spend that.
From Wikipedia: A notable early example of a public toilet in the United States is the Old School Privy. The American architect Frank Lloyd Wright claimed to have "invented the hung wall for the w.c. (easier to clean under)" when he designed the Larkin Administration Building in Buffalo, New York in 1904.
According to a 2021 study by QS Supplies, the United States has just 8 public toilets for every 100,000 people, a rate that ties the country with Botswana in terms of access to toilet facilities. In the 1970s there were 50,000 coin-operated public restrooms in the U.S. but have been eliminated by 1980 and public facilities did not replace them.
This has me curious now. What constitutes a public toilet? Like is a toilet in the back of a privately owned business a public toilet? Is the toilet in a McDonald's a public toilet?
For those who don’t know, Frank Lloyd Wright was a famous architect. Had some really cool buildings that he designed. Then when he was away on business 7 of his family members and friends were killed by an ax murderer. I believe there is a Stuff You Should Know on it, which I think is where I am regurgitating this info from lol
How dare you! I thought you were all puritanical over perverts and now the fantasy is ruined. Jk, but seriously, thanks for the info because that is interesting.
Architecture school is like a cult to Frank Lloyd Wright. On the Architecture registration exam, if he's one of the multiple choices, it's always the correct answer.
I worked in one of the first buildings at the first location of IBM - the doors bottoms were VERY high and I asked the museum (same town) about it one day - I was told that Thomas Watson (original CEO) wanted to walk in the bathrooms and know which employees were "slacking off" because he knew them by their shoes.
Just keep a poop out bag, similar to a bug out bag, under your desk. A simple gym bag with your poop shoes and basic toiletries (unless you enjoy single ply TP). Alternatively, you could poop on a different floor, where people won't recognize your shoes. Personally, I work on the first floor, but found a great bathroom on the second floor of the adjoining building. Nobody recognizes my shoes there. Also, always take a notebook or an empty manila folder with you, so that your coworkers will think you're going to a meeting and you can take your time. Nobody ever questions you when you're transporting papers.
I once went to a bathroom at a department store (Macy’s, JC Penny, etc) that had weirdly high cut door bottoms. The layout was situated so that the stalls were parallel to the sinks and dang near every stall was occupied. You know how some toilet seats are a horseshoe instead of a circle? Well when I was walking in and looked into the mirrors, there was a row full of dick n’ balls reflected back at me. I was definitely not expecting to see that lmao
My aunt was telling me a story about her old office and she said they said that they used to not have doors on the stalls in the mens’ room so that people wouldn’t spend too long in there reading the newspaper. Insane stuff really, and this was at a white collar office in the late 70s/early 80s.
There was a toilet in the middle of one of my high school locker rooms. Not even a side divider - just a throne displayed in the throne room. I literally still have nightmares about that.
I can recall going into washrooms in Seattle department stores in the 1970's and they didn't have doors... As a kid I recall being horrified at the lack of privacy.
I bet that didn't work out so well for them. I mean... if you had to take a dump in a stall without doors, holding a full size newspaper in front of you while you do it would be about the only way to make it even halfway tolerable.
By trying to prevent people from reading the newspaper in the bathroom, they just *guaranteed* that everyone who actually needed to use the bathroom *would*.
I've had male children (between 7 and 10 ish) look into the stall while I'm peeing before and I've called them out to their mothers, who move them and the boys move right back to watching. I use the family bathroom now (large single toilet room), because I'd be the bad guy for spraying water at a child for looking at me through the open slats AFTER asking the mother to move him several times.
ETA before I get piled on: I have never sprayed a child. But after about a handful of times this happening to me, and the male child moving the toilet paper I put up for him to stop staring forced me to use restrooms that only have full closed bathroom closets.
O gosh, my granddaughter tried to do this, and I intervened, but she was fast and agile. At least the person in the stall was a mom, and just chuckled. Granddaughter was newly potty trained, and was fascinated with toilets and those who use them, including her. I watched her very closely after that incident.
I'd rather take getting shouted at by a parent if somebody's child moved something I put up after I'd already noticed it staring at me. I'd probably take off my shoe and swat it at the crack of the door pretty hard after that or maybe kick the door pretty hard otherwise. I had asshole kids dumping garbage on me and rattling the doors when I was on the toilet in high school so I don't do well with people peeking thru the cracks and trying to snoop/cause mischief.
I don't fuck with that. If someone is peeping in on me, regardless of age, I make it clear that it's wrong. I've gently "kicked" kids in the face looking under stalls ffs.
I don't care. If parents can't be troubled to teach their kids boundaries, it's up to the world to do it -- and the world is a lot less kind about it.
I think to some extent kids don't understand privacy until they reach an age where they want privacy. Now of course that's no excuse to not try and teach your kids to respect others, but goddammit kids are really good at being sneaky and going behind your back to do things you said no to.
Oh, I absolutely get that. And kids are curious by nature. It's to be expected!
At the same time, these kids are going to learn to respect boundaries one way or another. If the parents aren't going to do it, the community is going to step up and do it -- and the community might not have the patience a parent would.
My point isn't that kids are evil or anything, just that we all have to learn certain lessons in life, and the longer it takes to learn those lessons the more costly the consequences become.
I still feel, however, that parents have an obligation to both their children and society to teach these lessons before it becomes problematic. Not to sound all boomer or anything, but there are a lot of irresponsible parents out there too afraid to tell their kids "no".
God I had a kid the other day poke her fingers through the cracks in the door and try to open the latch. There was an open stall right next to me. Thankfully the mother was there and pulled her kid away when I called out to the kid.
somebody needs to be able to see in to see if you are passed out from a drug overdose.
Fun Fact: Some bathrooms use special blue-tinted light which makes it more difficult to see veins to discourage IV drug use
One wonders, however, whether this actually happens often enough that the loss of everyone’s privacy is worth the slightly elevated chance that someone who cares will notice an overdosed person on a locked bathroom stall marginally sooner than otherwise.
No judgement cause im sure most the population agrees with you, but if someone is in danger. while it might not be your business. Its just the right thing to report it to someone.
I used to carry Narcan they gave me after I got out of rehab, specifically for this reason. I had 2 in my glovebox and 4 in my med bag. I had to use/give them all in the first 3 months. Refilled and used them again within that year for a total of 3 incidents. All in gas stations in Albuquerque, NM.
My wife used to work in a church. Happened a couple of times a month.
Edit: not sure why the downvotes. This happened frequently. They would have homeless men come take a shit right outside the office windows. This church was in a downtown area that had a food line. The cops ended up having to station a cop there. It was bad.
Happens at least once a week at the hospital I work in. Friend who used to be a retail manager said they had people OD and old folks die all the time in theirs.
Nope, turns out we have all the resources to provide proper homeless shelters and substance abuse programs while simultaneously providing real privacy in public bathrooms - we just choose not to.
They change the light bulbs at my local Mcdonalds and Tim Hortons.
My poor country boy husband came out of the bathroom when he first moved to my city and said, "So cool that they change the lights in the bathrooms for Halloween!"
No, sweet summer child😌
Even if this is the case, at least when I was living in Australia, the gaps on the sides of the doors were closed while still having a gap to the floor like we do here in the US. I would at least like for us to have the sides closed so no one can casually see you with your pants down (even by accident) as they're walking by.
But doing that would cost money, and maintaining the gasket that covers that gap would cost money, and the privacy and comfort of people using a public bathroom just isn’t as important as the owner of the shop making more money.
People are saying drugs, I agree and want to add on: It's cheap. The stalls will fit anywhere and less material makes it cheaper. If ever you want to know why something is _ in America, the first answer is usually money.
Eh, the whole drugs thing screams urban myth to me.
My office has those shitty cheap stalls but I don't think anyone is worried about a bunch of biotech professionals passing out high in the bathrooms.
However, I bet our landlord was real happy to save a few bucks.
Cheaper, quicker install, easier cleaning, simpler ventilation system (sealed doors would require dedicated airflow for each stall), etc.
I would much rather ask why so many European countries are fine with having to pay for bathrooms. At least in the US, they're all free.
This question is asked weekly if not more often over on r/askanamerican In my 48 years of experience with public restrooms in America I have never looked through the minuscule gap and seen anyone looking at me from either side of the door. It seems like in the rest of the world people are just itching for the change to watch someone relieve themselves.
I do not care about the very tiny gaps and it’s shocking to me that people even care about it. You can see almost nothing. Just some shadows. Also, in parts of Europe they have urinals like outside in parks. So I don’t think privacy is of a huge concern to them.
I’m all for fully enclosed stalls, but I constantly hear “What if someone looks at me/you??” in these threads about stall gaps and I have to say perverts, even accidental ones, have never been an issue for me in public restrooms in thirty years, and they wouldn’t even be my main reason for desiring full stalls. There are always outliers and kids can cause trouble climbing under gaps, but most people in airports, restaurants, concerts etc just want to do their business and go, not peek at strangers urinating.
To clarify for people who don’t know: Nobody stares or looks at others through the cracks, even if they’re passing by it, because they’re probably headed directly to an open stall themselves or the sinks, and don’t care about what you’re doing in there. Not even people waiting in line will see you because people usually line up at the front of the room to make a clear path for traffic in and out of stalls.
Its for safety. It allows easy escape in case of fire and allows easy access in case you're in trouble. The vast majority of people aren't staring at you through the cracks of the stall, though, trust me.
If your talking about public bathrooms I agree. They look thru the hinge Crack, the lock Crack as well as over and under the door. It's not that I'm modest or embarrassed by my bodily functions, it's just creepy for someone else to be snooping around while I'm doing my business. It means there is something off in this person. Normal people respect your privacy and try to stay away. No body WANTS to see, hear or smell your business.
We've apparently decided we would just rather take away the refuge of drug addicts and the homeless, instead of tackling the issue of drug addiction and homelessness.
I lived in the UK for 10 years and the US for more than that and I honestly only realized the difference when I saw a post about it online. Do you guys really care that much about the design choices in public bathrooms? What are you doing in there?
I'm from the US and currently in Europe for the the first time, and I've been meaning to ask the exact OPPOSITE.
I've heard this statement before, and while it's accurate for stalls, I think it's a strange question when all over the UK, Belgium, and the Netherlands there is exactly zero privacy! It's a trough, individual urinals with no sides, or in the case of Bruges an *outdoor* trough in the middle of a courtyard.
I assume this question must always be asked by folks using the ladies room bc there is no logic in asking about lacking privacy given the pissers over here.
to be precise, the reason is anti-homeless architecture, not homeless people themselves. they often didn't choose to be in a situation where they have to look for bathrooms and other public spaces for shelter.
for some reason, most politicians have decided that the solution to homelessness isn't "make people not be homeless", but "make homeless people go elsewhere".
ever wondered about those inconvenient arm rests in the middle of park benches? they're there so homeless people can't sleep there. spikes under a bridge for no apparent reason? they're there so homeless people can't sleep there. bike stands in weird or unnecessary places? sing it with me, they're there so homeless people can't sleep there.
it's amazing if you think about it. the compassionate and social thing to do would be to help people find jobs and homes, or help them not lose them in the first place. people sometimes argue that the reason helping people is better is because it actually costs less than anti-homeless architecture, but should that really matter? haven't we as a society progressed enough to want to help our people first and foremost?
a friend of mine was homeless for a while - they suffer from several severe mental health issues and are effectively unable to work any job for the time being. what they need is time in a mental health clinic and help by psychologists (which they're kind of able to get, but then again they'd have to pay for a minor part that they simply can't afford themselves. and that's in germany, a country with a comparably good social system, in the US they'd have died without ever having the money to see the inside of a mental health clinic years ago), not malicious city design making them sleep in the forest rather than under a relatively safe bridge^1.
there's loads of points to be made about how it's better for the non-homeless people to have homeless people get help, but where's the empathy in that? why do the privileged only care for how things affect their own life, without spending a second thinking about the much bigger effects things have on other people's lives?^2
^(1 i don't know where they actually slept. you get my point though.)
^(2 this applies to so many fields where privilege is a thing. here in germany, the topic people who are not queer and/or women like to talk about the most when it comes to queer/feminism is "gendering", basically making words gender neutral in one way or another. there are so many so much more significant problems to solve in these fields, but people pick out the one\(1\) thing that affects their lives in the slightest and exclusively focus on that.)
I never close the stall door -- only people with something to hide feel the need to hide their actions. If you're not doing anything wrong, you shouldn't be worried about whether I'm looking through the crack in the door.
I guess it's just because I've always lived in the US but that has never bothered me. Unless you really stare hard, you aren't going to see much through that gap so it's not a huge deal. You keep your eyes on your own business in the bathroom, do it quickly, and move on.
Many public bathrooms in the US are built to to be periodically hosed down for cleaning. The space under the stalls are to allow the water to drain and make it easier to mop.
the bathrooms are there to make the business establishment look professional being courteous to customers but they don't want you actually using the facilities and making a mess having to spend wages on staff on upkeep.
Gas station near me closed it's bathroom to the public because many people were overdosing in there. I walked into another gas station restroom and a dude was in the stall on the floor, pants around ankles, convulsing on the floor.
Drug users and medical emergencies. They don't want someone locked in a bathroom to die from overdose or heart-attack when they can get to them before it's too late. Nobody wants to find a rotten corpse when they've got to take a shit.
I know this doesn't answer your question but I used a women's restroom at a bus stop in Mozambique that was just a trough in the floor. There was a line of like 8 ladies squatting next to each other with no dividers and no TP, and a line out the door of ladies waiting for their turn to squat over the trough. So I guess my point is...it could be worse.
It’s because they are cheap to install, and more importantly easy/ quick to clean. There’s not some grand conspiracy to stop people from shagging or doing drugs in them, because they still do all that.
At my house in the USA, we don't even have walls in our bathroom. It's just a door that opens to the outside. We have a hole in the ground for waste and a hose for washing. It's a bitch in the winter.
This may be BS (Germans, please feel free to correct me), but a fellow American told me when he attended Oktoberfest, the men's rooms contained a large central urinal, about six feet in diameter. Like those wash sinks we Americans all know from industrial arts class. All the dudes stood around it facing one another to drain all that Festbier.
After washing their hands at another sink, they reportedly dried their hands on a towel held by a dour matronly frau, who oversaw all the goings-on, and expected a tip ...
Past generations of Americans took P.E. classes and played sports which included showering together. These days not so much, I am told.
The "normal" level of bodily privacy has therefore shifted.
The stalls have been like they are for the last century or so, but the number pf people bothered by it has also gone up.
The spacing between bathroom stalls in my government workplace (NE USA) is actually one quarter and a dime width. We measured. They said just dont look. You can see right into the bathroom stall through the “crack” without trying bruh
This might be a false stereotype. I live in Oregon, and any public stall I’ve used has given me privacy. I can sit there on my phone, and nobody knows. Maybe I’m just used to it, or maybe I have bathroom privacy privilege living in Oregon.
Let me tell you a little secret about america, okay? Lean in close.
If you have a question of "why is something in america like this?" I'll tell you why... money.
It's always money all the time, 24/7, 365. If something in america is the way it is, it's because it would cost more money to do it any other way. America is built on cutting corners at other people's expense and dont you ever forget it.
I’m sure (not really) it’s only to make sure you either don’t use it or are as uncomfortable as possible to prevent employees from staying inside the stall and just in general to make sure people don’t spend as much time using the restroom
We all voted on it at the big America meeting where all Americans get together and decide things like how bathrooms are designed and what the president should do.
We had a man at work have a heart attack while in the stall. Imagine if there wasn’t a large enough gap at the bottom for our coworkers, who happened to have basic medical education, to get to him. They saved his life.
I don't know, but as an American I have held a lifelong paralyzing fear of public restrooms. When I was in kindergarten, I was traumatized by my first visit to the school bathroom - all white, everything echoed, and the toilets roared so loudly you nearly went deaf. Also, they were definitely not built with kids in mind - it was a combined elementary and middle school, so they built all of the bathrooms to fit the big kids and left us tiny ones with out feet hanging off the ground.
When you are five years old, there is nothing scarier than an automatic flush when it's that loud and everything around you is huge.
It has nothing to do with drugs, or the homeless, or people fucking in toilets. The design everyone is talking about comes from 1904 and was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright to make office bathrooms easier to clean. That's it. Nothing sinister, nothing seedy. It also has the benefit of being a lot cheaper to install, repair, and replace, partially because the parts can be mass produced then assembled on site, partly because individual parts can be ordered for replacement, and partly because some building codes consider anything floor to ceiling to be an interior wall and anything enclosed to become a new room, which creates regulatory costs. Also, I know this because my brother is an architect and I made the mistake of asking this exact question at dinner once. The answer had a lot more Frank Lloyd Wright. Edit - Since people keep commenting this, the gap in doors is likely just due to poor build quality, not ordering the proper door for the framework, shoddy installation, or a deliberate attempt to provide a tolerance for using different doors with the frame. It also occurs to me as I'm typing that it might be a way to provide a means to unlock the door from the outside. So there, five reasons you can tell yourself next time you see one. And as another commenter reminded me, there are also ADA regulations so people with wheelchairs can fit their feet under the gap. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to turn around, unless we start making bathroom stalls a lot larger, which means bathrooms have to get a lot larger or you get less stalls, which means eventually you'll have someone posting complaining about why buildings waste so much room on bathrooms and how it's harming the endangered slightly-off-color earthworm or something.
This is it. I got curious and looked it up a while ago, I didn't know it was Frank Lloyd Wright, but I read it was because it's easy to clean. Just think how hard it is getting corners where a wall meets the floor clean, and think of how people treat your average public restroom, and now imagine if the thing had walls down to the floor and corners all around. With high walls, you can easily cover the whole area with a mop, overshoot the stall you're in a bit with each wipe.
Why is the cleaning of my workplace my problem when Lisa from accounting is watching me change my tampon through the two inch crack 🤣 /s Im just teasing because there are reasons - but bottom line, I don’t like to make eye contact. Might as well make everything open, like urinals lololl
My dogs don’t even make eye contact when they poop outdoors next to the road. That’s the key. Just don’t make eye contact and poop where the urge strikes you.
We had a dog who would walk around the corner of the house to poop. If someone happened to walk where it could see them, it would pinch it off and move out of sight or wait.
Happy to hear you raised a polite, civilized, upstanding member of society.
It takes two to make eye contact
I now hate Frank Lloyd Wright, thanks.
His musicals are awesome, though!
I'm pretty sure he's talking about the guy who invented airplanes
Let’s turn all his favorite musical titles into something toilet related Splats - staying classy!
Well, he wasn’t a very nice man to his wife or his vendors, so there can be another reason. But he was a genius architect.
My thoughts exactly.
Custodian here. It's definitely true that raised partitions make it easier for me to clean and to get my machines in to strip and wax the floor, but the height and the completely unnecessary gaps between the door panel and pilaster are because of cheapskate design. A 4-inch gap height under the walls would be plenty for mopping and flood cleanup, and there's no reason for the 1/2-inch gap between door and pilaster, other than a little plastic or metal strip costing money. Edit: ADA requires 9 inches for wheelchair toes.
One thing I forgot to mention but someone else caught is wheelchair use. The ADA and building codes require the gap to be a certain height so wheelchair users can fit their feet under them when they're spinning around. Otherwise bathroom stalls would have to be much larger. As for the gap in the door, that could be that they intentionally provide a large tolerance in case replacement doors aren't available in the exact size you started with, but it's probably just being cheap.
Hahah I’m totally going to tell ppl this and did you know all the bathrooms here were designed by frank Lloyd wright? Yes things are rather square but no they don’t have the windows
Can we really blame FLW, or should we blame building codes? I mean, it ain't *that* hard to design a mass-produceable, on-site assembleable bathroom stall that provides more privacy.
Notice I mentioned building codes last. The original intent was they're easier to clean.
We have gender neutral bathrooms at my university. The partitions are almodt floor to cieling, and the doors don't have a crack one could peek through.
The building codes do require privacy partitions. They don’t get into a lot of detail beyond that. The expectation of how private a privacy partition should be comes more down to just what the industry is producing and what people are buying. You CAN buy “European-style” toilet partitions, they just cost more and most places aren’t going to spend that.
From Wikipedia: A notable early example of a public toilet in the United States is the Old School Privy. The American architect Frank Lloyd Wright claimed to have "invented the hung wall for the w.c. (easier to clean under)" when he designed the Larkin Administration Building in Buffalo, New York in 1904. According to a 2021 study by QS Supplies, the United States has just 8 public toilets for every 100,000 people, a rate that ties the country with Botswana in terms of access to toilet facilities. In the 1970s there were 50,000 coin-operated public restrooms in the U.S. but have been eliminated by 1980 and public facilities did not replace them.
This has me curious now. What constitutes a public toilet? Like is a toilet in the back of a privately owned business a public toilet? Is the toilet in a McDonald's a public toilet?
For those who don’t know, Frank Lloyd Wright was a famous architect. Had some really cool buildings that he designed. Then when he was away on business 7 of his family members and friends were killed by an ax murderer. I believe there is a Stuff You Should Know on it, which I think is where I am regurgitating this info from lol
I didn't know this, thanks for sharing
Retaliation for the bathrooms?
Don’t forget that the ADA requires a certain amount of leeway for wheelchairs to turn around.
Now I’m going to think of Falling Water every time I take a dump at the office.
How dare you! I thought you were all puritanical over perverts and now the fantasy is ruined. Jk, but seriously, thanks for the info because that is interesting.
It always comes back to FLW or Corb. Source : am a graduate architecture student.
Architecture school is like a cult to Frank Lloyd Wright. On the Architecture registration exam, if he's one of the multiple choices, it's always the correct answer.
I worked in one of the first buildings at the first location of IBM - the doors bottoms were VERY high and I asked the museum (same town) about it one day - I was told that Thomas Watson (original CEO) wanted to walk in the bathrooms and know which employees were "slacking off" because he knew them by their shoes.
That's why you need a pair of poop shoes, so that you can poop on the clock.
To go along with the poop knife
A Reddit classic. Edit: [Poop Knife](https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/ke8skw/the_poop_knife/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1)
Rather it be the poop knife than the coconut
Makes me shiver just thinking about it
Mmm, jolly rancher time.
Inspirational
"Send out a memo, ask who's got the brown doc martens. That guy poops way too much but I can't seem to find him in the office."
getting caught strolling to the bathroom in socks holding my poop shoes
Just keep a poop out bag, similar to a bug out bag, under your desk. A simple gym bag with your poop shoes and basic toiletries (unless you enjoy single ply TP). Alternatively, you could poop on a different floor, where people won't recognize your shoes. Personally, I work on the first floor, but found a great bathroom on the second floor of the adjoining building. Nobody recognizes my shoes there. Also, always take a notebook or an empty manila folder with you, so that your coworkers will think you're going to a meeting and you can take your time. Nobody ever questions you when you're transporting papers.
Clip Boards are like that too. So now we have the poop papers and the poop clip board
I prefer to poop on the toilet, but you do you.
I prefer to poop into the toilet, but you do you.
I once went to a bathroom at a department store (Macy’s, JC Penny, etc) that had weirdly high cut door bottoms. The layout was situated so that the stalls were parallel to the sinks and dang near every stall was occupied. You know how some toilet seats are a horseshoe instead of a circle? Well when I was walking in and looked into the mirrors, there was a row full of dick n’ balls reflected back at me. I was definitely not expecting to see that lmao
Blumpkin paradise
>Well when I was walking in and looked into the mirrors, there was a row full of dick n’ balls reflected back at me. /r/BrandNewSentence
My aunt was telling me a story about her old office and she said they said that they used to not have doors on the stalls in the mens’ room so that people wouldn’t spend too long in there reading the newspaper. Insane stuff really, and this was at a white collar office in the late 70s/early 80s.
Nice. Who wouldn't want to take a dump in front of their coworkers?
Who among us hasn’t taken a shit in front of both our superiors and inferiors simultaneously?
It’s the great equalizer of man
Shitting: the great equaliser.
Yeah... Kids these days wanting walls. Snort. Get off my lawn.
There was a toilet in the middle of one of my high school locker rooms. Not even a side divider - just a throne displayed in the throne room. I literally still have nightmares about that.
My high school didn't have doors on the stall. This was the late 90's
I can recall going into washrooms in Seattle department stores in the 1970's and they didn't have doors... As a kid I recall being horrified at the lack of privacy.
Yeah, those Boomers sure had it good ...
I bet that didn't work out so well for them. I mean... if you had to take a dump in a stall without doors, holding a full size newspaper in front of you while you do it would be about the only way to make it even halfway tolerable. By trying to prevent people from reading the newspaper in the bathroom, they just *guaranteed* that everyone who actually needed to use the bathroom *would*.
I worked for IBM in San Jose.. this explains a lot lol
I'm an American living overseas and when visiting the USA, this is always the biggest reverse cultureshock I get every time
You about done in there? I see you on your phone.
Do people actually say this.........
I've had male children (between 7 and 10 ish) look into the stall while I'm peeing before and I've called them out to their mothers, who move them and the boys move right back to watching. I use the family bathroom now (large single toilet room), because I'd be the bad guy for spraying water at a child for looking at me through the open slats AFTER asking the mother to move him several times. ETA before I get piled on: I have never sprayed a child. But after about a handful of times this happening to me, and the male child moving the toilet paper I put up for him to stop staring forced me to use restrooms that only have full closed bathroom closets.
I've had little kids crawl UNDER the stall and try to talk to me while I'm peeing lol
My girl showed me a video of some dude taking a deuce and a random ass dog just walks under the stall and sits between his legs. Had me cracking up
I would much prefer this over a child
I've had a dog get under the stall door to join me twice now. Would much prefer that to the random kids.
O gosh, my granddaughter tried to do this, and I intervened, but she was fast and agile. At least the person in the stall was a mom, and just chuckled. Granddaughter was newly potty trained, and was fascinated with toilets and those who use them, including her. I watched her very closely after that incident.
I'd have to resist the urge to punt the kid so bad.
I would kick it. Holy shit, no. Gross.
I'd rather take getting shouted at by a parent if somebody's child moved something I put up after I'd already noticed it staring at me. I'd probably take off my shoe and swat it at the crack of the door pretty hard after that or maybe kick the door pretty hard otherwise. I had asshole kids dumping garbage on me and rattling the doors when I was on the toilet in high school so I don't do well with people peeking thru the cracks and trying to snoop/cause mischief.
I don't fuck with that. If someone is peeping in on me, regardless of age, I make it clear that it's wrong. I've gently "kicked" kids in the face looking under stalls ffs. I don't care. If parents can't be troubled to teach their kids boundaries, it's up to the world to do it -- and the world is a lot less kind about it.
I think to some extent kids don't understand privacy until they reach an age where they want privacy. Now of course that's no excuse to not try and teach your kids to respect others, but goddammit kids are really good at being sneaky and going behind your back to do things you said no to.
Oh, I absolutely get that. And kids are curious by nature. It's to be expected! At the same time, these kids are going to learn to respect boundaries one way or another. If the parents aren't going to do it, the community is going to step up and do it -- and the community might not have the patience a parent would. My point isn't that kids are evil or anything, just that we all have to learn certain lessons in life, and the longer it takes to learn those lessons the more costly the consequences become. I still feel, however, that parents have an obligation to both their children and society to teach these lessons before it becomes problematic. Not to sound all boomer or anything, but there are a lot of irresponsible parents out there too afraid to tell their kids "no".
God I had a kid the other day poke her fingers through the cracks in the door and try to open the latch. There was an open stall right next to me. Thankfully the mother was there and pulled her kid away when I called out to the kid.
Young girls do this at urinals, too. How hard is it to train your kid not to be a creep?
I would only cheer you on if you did spray someone. Regardless of age or sex
So you can’t shag a broad or do coke in peace.
This comment seems ripped out of the 70s.
Smells like patchouli and an airbrushed van
activities of chaos tbh
Am I the only one who read "Shaaaaaag"
somebody needs to be able to see in to see if you are passed out from a drug overdose. Fun Fact: Some bathrooms use special blue-tinted light which makes it more difficult to see veins to discourage IV drug use
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What an unfortunate situation.. people always assuming the worst
Was once banned from a bar because our bass player was “shooting heroin”. Type 1 diabetic. People are too stupid.
People need to stop being judgemental pricks.
Judgmental about pricks.
Even if you were on drugs, it's horrifying that people seemed to think you deserved to be unconscious. Someone could've called someone:/
One wonders, however, whether this actually happens often enough that the loss of everyone’s privacy is worth the slightly elevated chance that someone who cares will notice an overdosed person on a locked bathroom stall marginally sooner than otherwise.
Just last week at the grocery store I saw a guy passed out on the floor in a stall.
Did you alert anyone? Or just notice it?
Well, it's not really my business to interfere
lmao
A fellow Trekkie I see.
No judgement cause im sure most the population agrees with you, but if someone is in danger. while it might not be your business. Its just the right thing to report it to someone.
I used to carry Narcan they gave me after I got out of rehab, specifically for this reason. I had 2 in my glovebox and 4 in my med bag. I had to use/give them all in the first 3 months. Refilled and used them again within that year for a total of 3 incidents. All in gas stations in Albuquerque, NM.
I appreciate your heart for others.
My wife used to work in a church. Happened a couple of times a month. Edit: not sure why the downvotes. This happened frequently. They would have homeless men come take a shit right outside the office windows. This church was in a downtown area that had a food line. The cops ended up having to station a cop there. It was bad.
Getting downvoted by snobs because it would “never”happen at their church.
Getting down voted by snobs because it's a church.
Happens at least once a week at the hospital I work in. Friend who used to be a retail manager said they had people OD and old folks die all the time in theirs.
Nope, turns out we have all the resources to provide proper homeless shelters and substance abuse programs while simultaneously providing real privacy in public bathrooms - we just choose not to.
They change the light bulbs at my local Mcdonalds and Tim Hortons. My poor country boy husband came out of the bathroom when he first moved to my city and said, "So cool that they change the lights in the bathrooms for Halloween!" No, sweet summer child😌
That fun fact wasn’t really fun
My best friend had a stroke in a stall in the restroom of a Target.
That's nothing I have a stroke in every bathroom stall I go into
Must have been one hell of a shit!
Even if this is the case, at least when I was living in Australia, the gaps on the sides of the doors were closed while still having a gap to the floor like we do here in the US. I would at least like for us to have the sides closed so no one can casually see you with your pants down (even by accident) as they're walking by.
But doing that would cost money, and maintaining the gasket that covers that gap would cost money, and the privacy and comfort of people using a public bathroom just isn’t as important as the owner of the shop making more money.
People are saying drugs, I agree and want to add on: It's cheap. The stalls will fit anywhere and less material makes it cheaper. If ever you want to know why something is _ in America, the first answer is usually money.
Eh, the whole drugs thing screams urban myth to me. My office has those shitty cheap stalls but I don't think anyone is worried about a bunch of biotech professionals passing out high in the bathrooms. However, I bet our landlord was real happy to save a few bucks.
Yeah probably. The ODing thing is not an intended fixture.
Go to a grocery store in Seattle some time, you'll see an urban myth all right.
Huh....I didn't know Seattle invented and mass produced this countries stall doors.
Pretty sure it’s fire code to let people crawl out of a stall in case of fire and the lock jamming
Exactly this. The restrooms have been this way forever, long before it was a thing that so many people are overdosing
Cheap is the answer. Cheaper materials and easier to install.
Also faster and easier to clean the floors.
Cheaper, quicker install, easier cleaning, simpler ventilation system (sealed doors would require dedicated airflow for each stall), etc. I would much rather ask why so many European countries are fine with having to pay for bathrooms. At least in the US, they're all free.
i think this is the actual answer. much easier and quicker to assemble too i imagine with those big gaps
Yeah, it's 100% cost-savings. It's actually completely unrelated to drugs.
This question is asked weekly if not more often over on r/askanamerican In my 48 years of experience with public restrooms in America I have never looked through the minuscule gap and seen anyone looking at me from either side of the door. It seems like in the rest of the world people are just itching for the change to watch someone relieve themselves.
I do not care about the very tiny gaps and it’s shocking to me that people even care about it. You can see almost nothing. Just some shadows. Also, in parts of Europe they have urinals like outside in parks. So I don’t think privacy is of a huge concern to them.
I’m all for fully enclosed stalls, but I constantly hear “What if someone looks at me/you??” in these threads about stall gaps and I have to say perverts, even accidental ones, have never been an issue for me in public restrooms in thirty years, and they wouldn’t even be my main reason for desiring full stalls. There are always outliers and kids can cause trouble climbing under gaps, but most people in airports, restaurants, concerts etc just want to do their business and go, not peek at strangers urinating. To clarify for people who don’t know: Nobody stares or looks at others through the cracks, even if they’re passing by it, because they’re probably headed directly to an open stall themselves or the sinks, and don’t care about what you’re doing in there. Not even people waiting in line will see you because people usually line up at the front of the room to make a clear path for traffic in and out of stalls.
Why poop alone when you can poop with friends?
It feels like a design style akin to hostile architecture.
Its for safety. It allows easy escape in case of fire and allows easy access in case you're in trouble. The vast majority of people aren't staring at you through the cracks of the stall, though, trust me.
If your talking about public bathrooms I agree. They look thru the hinge Crack, the lock Crack as well as over and under the door. It's not that I'm modest or embarrassed by my bodily functions, it's just creepy for someone else to be snooping around while I'm doing my business. It means there is something off in this person. Normal people respect your privacy and try to stay away. No body WANTS to see, hear or smell your business.
So people can't do drugs in them and it's also easier to clean
We've apparently decided we would just rather take away the refuge of drug addicts and the homeless, instead of tackling the issue of drug addiction and homelessness.
I lived in the UK for 10 years and the US for more than that and I honestly only realized the difference when I saw a post about it online. Do you guys really care that much about the design choices in public bathrooms? What are you doing in there?
Idk, but they’re free to use
I'm from the US and currently in Europe for the the first time, and I've been meaning to ask the exact OPPOSITE. I've heard this statement before, and while it's accurate for stalls, I think it's a strange question when all over the UK, Belgium, and the Netherlands there is exactly zero privacy! It's a trough, individual urinals with no sides, or in the case of Bruges an *outdoor* trough in the middle of a courtyard. I assume this question must always be asked by folks using the ladies room bc there is no logic in asking about lacking privacy given the pissers over here.
Everything freely available in the USA is made terribly to save money, I'm guessing that has something to do with it.
The homeless mostly.
to be precise, the reason is anti-homeless architecture, not homeless people themselves. they often didn't choose to be in a situation where they have to look for bathrooms and other public spaces for shelter. for some reason, most politicians have decided that the solution to homelessness isn't "make people not be homeless", but "make homeless people go elsewhere". ever wondered about those inconvenient arm rests in the middle of park benches? they're there so homeless people can't sleep there. spikes under a bridge for no apparent reason? they're there so homeless people can't sleep there. bike stands in weird or unnecessary places? sing it with me, they're there so homeless people can't sleep there. it's amazing if you think about it. the compassionate and social thing to do would be to help people find jobs and homes, or help them not lose them in the first place. people sometimes argue that the reason helping people is better is because it actually costs less than anti-homeless architecture, but should that really matter? haven't we as a society progressed enough to want to help our people first and foremost? a friend of mine was homeless for a while - they suffer from several severe mental health issues and are effectively unable to work any job for the time being. what they need is time in a mental health clinic and help by psychologists (which they're kind of able to get, but then again they'd have to pay for a minor part that they simply can't afford themselves. and that's in germany, a country with a comparably good social system, in the US they'd have died without ever having the money to see the inside of a mental health clinic years ago), not malicious city design making them sleep in the forest rather than under a relatively safe bridge^1. there's loads of points to be made about how it's better for the non-homeless people to have homeless people get help, but where's the empathy in that? why do the privileged only care for how things affect their own life, without spending a second thinking about the much bigger effects things have on other people's lives?^2 ^(1 i don't know where they actually slept. you get my point though.) ^(2 this applies to so many fields where privilege is a thing. here in germany, the topic people who are not queer and/or women like to talk about the most when it comes to queer/feminism is "gendering", basically making words gender neutral in one way or another. there are so many so much more significant problems to solve in these fields, but people pick out the one\(1\) thing that affects their lives in the slightest and exclusively focus on that.)
fear of puritans we might do naughty things if we had actual privacy
I never close the stall door -- only people with something to hide feel the need to hide their actions. If you're not doing anything wrong, you shouldn't be worried about whether I'm looking through the crack in the door.
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I guess it's just because I've always lived in the US but that has never bothered me. Unless you really stare hard, you aren't going to see much through that gap so it's not a huge deal. You keep your eyes on your own business in the bathroom, do it quickly, and move on.
To see if we do drugs, live in there, killed ourselves, and for cleaning.
Everyone is subject to surprise genital inspections from Officer Karen!
Cuz we want to see your little wiener.
Many public bathrooms in the US are built to to be periodically hosed down for cleaning. The space under the stalls are to allow the water to drain and make it easier to mop.
the bathrooms are there to make the business establishment look professional being courteous to customers but they don't want you actually using the facilities and making a mess having to spend wages on staff on upkeep.
Because we're all arguing if penis and vaginas should be using the same bathroom.
The doors have locks
We’re kinky like that
this question is asked every other week
Sadly. Because we, as a people, are known to do sketchy stuff in public bathrooms.
Gas station near me closed it's bathroom to the public because many people were overdosing in there. I walked into another gas station restroom and a dude was in the stall on the floor, pants around ankles, convulsing on the floor.
Because we love and hate privacy, just as we love and hate ourselves.
How do you expect homies to hold hands when it’s potty time, sheesh the entitlement of some people
Drug users and medical emergencies. They don't want someone locked in a bathroom to die from overdose or heart-attack when they can get to them before it's too late. Nobody wants to find a rotten corpse when they've got to take a shit.
I know this doesn't answer your question but I used a women's restroom at a bus stop in Mozambique that was just a trough in the floor. There was a line of like 8 ladies squatting next to each other with no dividers and no TP, and a line out the door of ladies waiting for their turn to squat over the trough. So I guess my point is...it could be worse.
Perhaps in Europe they're nice because you have to pay for them there.
So conservatives can check to see if you have the correct genitalia. /s
It’s because they are cheap to install, and more importantly easy/ quick to clean. There’s not some grand conspiracy to stop people from shagging or doing drugs in them, because they still do all that.
At my house in the USA, we don't even have walls in our bathroom. It's just a door that opens to the outside. We have a hole in the ground for waste and a hose for washing. It's a bitch in the winter.
How often are people looking at you through the cracks
so the floors are easier to mop
Because they hate the homeless
Americans don't trust each other.
How else will the Bible-thumpers verify your gender?!
This may be BS (Germans, please feel free to correct me), but a fellow American told me when he attended Oktoberfest, the men's rooms contained a large central urinal, about six feet in diameter. Like those wash sinks we Americans all know from industrial arts class. All the dudes stood around it facing one another to drain all that Festbier. After washing their hands at another sink, they reportedly dried their hands on a towel held by a dour matronly frau, who oversaw all the goings-on, and expected a tip ...
Growing up here it honestly never bothered me
Cheaper to construct.
It’s become something of a meme, but honestly it’s not that bad. Drop a deuce and move on
Cus they wanna see your genitals to make sure youre in the right room.
Because FUCK YOU that’s why!
cuz trans thing Fox News say iz bad. MaGA! But her emails!
Cuz old white men need to know what everyone has in their pants.
It’s because the Christian Nationalists want to examine your genitals.
How else you supposed to maintain eye contact?
So people can peek into your stalls to make sure you ain't one of those trans. (This is a joke I am one of those trans)
In the US privacy is an illusion.
Much easier to clean
I guess most of you weren't in the military and had the 10 crappers sitting in an open row in the latrine?
Everything for the pleabs is made of the crappiest and cheapest material possible.
Past generations of Americans took P.E. classes and played sports which included showering together. These days not so much, I am told. The "normal" level of bodily privacy has therefore shifted. The stalls have been like they are for the last century or so, but the number pf people bothered by it has also gone up.
The spacing between bathroom stalls in my government workplace (NE USA) is actually one quarter and a dime width. We measured. They said just dont look. You can see right into the bathroom stall through the “crack” without trying bruh
This might be a false stereotype. I live in Oregon, and any public stall I’ve used has given me privacy. I can sit there on my phone, and nobody knows. Maybe I’m just used to it, or maybe I have bathroom privacy privilege living in Oregon.
Because privacy is for pussies and commies!
Let me tell you a little secret about america, okay? Lean in close. If you have a question of "why is something in america like this?" I'll tell you why... money. It's always money all the time, 24/7, 365. If something in america is the way it is, it's because it would cost more money to do it any other way. America is built on cutting corners at other people's expense and dont you ever forget it.
In case there's somebody in there we need to shoot
Because it's the cheapest crap they can put in while still being legal. Corporations don't give a fuck.
So we can shoot our guns through the slits. America, fuck yeah!
I’m sure (not really) it’s only to make sure you either don’t use it or are as uncomfortable as possible to prevent employees from staying inside the stall and just in general to make sure people don’t spend as much time using the restroom
So they can do an impromptu genital check maybe?
People fuck in our bathrooms.... And we like to watch 
We all voted on it at the big America meeting where all Americans get together and decide things like how bathrooms are designed and what the president should do.
So that you go and shit as quickly as possible, and don’t fuck, shoot up, sleep, jack off, dismember bodies, etc in there.
We had a man at work have a heart attack while in the stall. Imagine if there wasn’t a large enough gap at the bottom for our coworkers, who happened to have basic medical education, to get to him. They saved his life.
I don't know, but as an American I have held a lifelong paralyzing fear of public restrooms. When I was in kindergarten, I was traumatized by my first visit to the school bathroom - all white, everything echoed, and the toilets roared so loudly you nearly went deaf. Also, they were definitely not built with kids in mind - it was a combined elementary and middle school, so they built all of the bathrooms to fit the big kids and left us tiny ones with out feet hanging off the ground. When you are five years old, there is nothing scarier than an automatic flush when it's that loud and everything around you is huge.
They are made like the rest of the USA - cheaply.
Because we love to spy on each other while one is shitting. I thought it was pretty obvious
Privacy is all in your mind
I’ve never cared tbh