Cleaning after others in a public bathroom
 Photo by Zach K licensed with Creative Commons. |
The only thing worse than walking into a public bathroom is walking into a public bathroom where the previous occupants failed to clean up after themselves. For a person like me, someone who’s an anal-retentive clean-freak, this causes a huge paradoxical situation. On the one hand there’s a mess that needs to be cleaned, but on the other hand that mess is disgusting and I wouldn’t want to risk germ transfer. Ordinarily my quest for germ-free self-preservation would win over my OCD, but there is a third factor that has to be weighed in.
You see, being born with the god given ability to piss while standing up, I could easily ‘do my business’ over the mess and not worry about it. The problem is that this would only really work at a ball game, movie theater, or concert where people expect the bathrooms to be destroyed. It’s a lot harder to pull off at the office or at a friends house. Here, when someone notices a mess, they’re going to automatically associate that mess with the last person they know was in the bathroom. Unfortunately, this means that any mess I choose to ignore I’m also choosing to take responsibility for.
So, even though it disgusts me, I often find myself cleaning up after other people when I use a public bathroom. It’s extremely annoying, but at least it saves me the embarrassment of being blamed for other peoples inability to clean up after themselves.
posted by Christopher Schnese
View Comments
Well being a lady, with the ability to pee squatting over a toilet, females are gross in the bathroom. I always find toilet seat covers still on the toilet, or splatters of piss on the toilet seat. Then when i go to wash my hands, about 90% of the time, their is water all over the sink. Public bathrooms are disgusting, but the cleanest one I have been in, is at my school out of all places.
One of my responsibilities at the fitness club where I’m Asst. Mgr. is to make sure the bathrooms are always presentable. From experience, I can definitely say that women are MUCH worse at cleaning after themselves. Everything from toilet paper all over the floor (if not totally stuffed into the toilet) to the sink/counters being flooded with water and soap. I feel your pain…I can NEVER leave a restroom without making sure everything looks decent.
i’ll use a wad of t.p. to clean up a few droplets from the previous idiot (who couldn’t color between the lines as a kid?) but any worse than that and i’m out the door to find another…
I hear you…I think it takes people like us cleaning up after others to get the bathrooms into even a half-decent mess, but the bottom line is that it sucks and it’s not fair! I’m not sure why, but bathrooms in other countries are usually cleaner and less littered, but then there is not a prevalence of public restrooms in other countries the way there is in America. Thus, it would stand to reason that Americans take their bathroom priviledges for granted…hence the mess we encounter.
Sometimes, I’ve been known to peek outside the stall (when there is more than one) to see if anyone is in the bathroom or coming. If there are several stalls AND no one is coming, it’s a lot safer to squat and run, rather than to take the time to clean someone else’s mess. Then again, it feels like a community effort to relieve the janitor of a more disgusting duty if one in every 10 bathroom patrons helped clean up a little bit!
Wen i Clean my bathroom i use different liquids and fragraces to get the stains and smells away..