Why Public Bathroom Doors Don’t Go To The Floor

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This post should resolve of its own volition.

👍︎︎ 5 👤︎︎ u/gobuffsfan14 📅︎︎ Dec 19 2020 🗫︎ replies

I think it's for ventilation.

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/UnwashedApple 📅︎︎ Dec 19 2020 🗫︎ replies

In many European countries and Middle Eastern countries, you get George's dream public washroom stalls, that go all the way to the floor and have their own ventilation. Pure privacy. Plus bidets.

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/CptPeanJucLicard 📅︎︎ Dec 19 2020 🗫︎ replies
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If you’ve ever run to the bathroom after  eating at your local mall’s food court,   you’ve probably spent enough time there to  notice some bizarre things. For instance,   why don’t the doors on public bathrooms go  all the way to the floor? It seems like a   place that practically begs for privacy, and  yet there are gaps on top, on the bottom,   and even those small cracks on the side of the  door that would allow anyone positioned just   right to get a good sense of how much fiber  you’re eating. Why not just put a door in? Well, for people with such high brow bathroom  musings, we created this video just for you.   Since we’re not ones to shy away from the  grosser side of life, we sent our public   bathroom examination squad to discover why it is  that public bathroom doors don’t go to the floor,   as well as 25 other insane public bathroom facts. Let’s start with the most important  question first. Even though it might   make you feel uncomfortable  when you’re inside the stall,   there are actually several practical reasons  why public bathroom doors don’t go to the floor.   First off, the visibility is good for keeping the  line moving and for deterring unwanted behavior.   The gap at the bottom of a bathroom stall allows  people to quickly check if a stall is occupied or   not. So instead of the next person who just walked  in knocking on every single bathroom door, a quick   low check will tell them if there’s an available  space. Also, the fact that you are partly visible   from the outside serves as a deterrent to gross  or illegal behavior - even though anyone who’s   worked at a Starbucks and dealt with unwelcome  bathroom guests is aware this doesn’t always work. Doors that don’t go to the floor also  make public bathrooms easier to clean,   as power washing the space will be able to  clean inside the stalls as well. Lastly,   the gap exists for safety reasons.  Someone having a medical emergency   or passed out inside will quickly  be identified from the outside;   and if someone gets stuck insidem they can easily  crawl out from underneath as a last resort. However, Americans in the audience might  be surprised to know that this door gap   is almost uniquely a feature of US  toilets.Our next public bathroom   fact is that toilets in Europe tend to have a  top to bottom door that fully closes instead.   So cleaning the stalls may take more time,  but perhaps the extra privacy is worth it. In fact, there are a few ways in which  toilets across the Atlantic differ, and one   is the sheer amount of water in the bowl. The  reason why US toilets are filled almost to the   brim with water is public bathroom fact #4! US toilets flush differently than European   toilets; they rely on suction rather than  water pushing the waste down. The reliance   on suction means US plumbing that sucks waste  out the toilet’s “trap way” has to be narrower,   and is therefore more prone to blockage, which  means much more water is required in the bowl. Toilets blocking, people relieving  themselves...one of the most frequent complaints   for public bathrooms is that they’re disgusting.  If you need to go, how do you pick the cleanest   stall? Well, science actually has an answer here!  Studies show that the cleanest stall tends to be   the one nearest to the door. Why? People have a  tendency to skip over the first stall they see   to use ones further in. You might notice yourself  doing this too in public bathrooms. So next time   you’re in one, resist your natural instinct  and instead, head straight to the first stall!   We can’t promise it will be clean, but it will  probably be the least likely to make you vomit. However, let’s say you’re not too worried  about how clean the stall is. After all,   you wash your hands thoroughly every time you  use the bathroom. Well, we have some bad news   in the form of fact number 6 almost 25% of soap  found in public bathroom soap containers is   contaminated. In fact, most soap is so bacteria  laden that after conducting a study on it,   microbiology professor Charles P. Gerba said,  there’s “so much fecal matter that you’re almost   better off washing your hands in the toilet  after you flush it.” How is this possible?   Well, the refillable containers housing  the soap tend to attract a lot of bacteria,   and public bathroom soap is usually over-diluted,   which makes it less resistant to germs and less  effective for sanitizing your hands. A good fact   to keep in mind before you exit the bathroom  to get back to your five-star gourmet dinner. Still, you think to yourself, you barely touch  ANYTHING in the restroom. You’re safer than   most. You even insist on using the air-dryer  to avoid touching the paper in the bathroom.   Well, this actually turns out to be  another big public bathroom no-no,   and fact seven. Air-dryers tend to  blow bacteria right off peoples’ hands,   and therefore all around the area where they’re  installed. A University of Leeds study - yes,   there are an awful lot of scientific  studies on public bathrooms, it turns   out - found that jet dryers have 27 times the  bacteria levels of paper towel dispensers. So what now? How can you possibly protect  yourself from all these germs everywhere?   How many more layers can you possibly put on  the toilet seat to keep yourself protected?   Actually, fact number eight says covering  the toilet seat might be one precaution   you’re taking that’s..pretty much useless.  Even though it sounds disgusting to sit   naked where others have sat, glute to glute  disease transmission isn’t really a thing.   There’s only one transmissible skin to skin  virus you could fear from public bathrooms,   called CA-MRSA, but there hasn’t been a  confirmed bathroom case transmission...ever! You’re more likely to come into contact with germs  after flushing, especially if you leave the lid   open. Germs can spray up to six feet in the  air this way! That’s why most scientists advise   closing the lid, and if possible, flushing  with your foot. Your hands tend to be the   biggest disease carriers, so avoid touching  them to too many surfaces, and wash them well. And why do women have longer usage times? Any  woman who has impatiently ducked into the mens’   room knows this is always the case. The answer  is a combination of factors. Mens’ bathrooms   cram many more available spaces inside thanks  to urinals, while women need to enter a stall.   Women also menstruate, and are usually the ones  to have to accompany children to the bathroom,   all of which take longer. And since  women almost always have to sit down,   while men just stand for #1, covering the toilet  in paper - which we already discussed as kind of   pointless - or using the infamous hover-pee  technique usually takes much more time. The following fact might also play a role in  different wait times for different genders:   only 30% of men, as opposed to 60% of women, wash  their hands properly after using the bathroom.   Ladies, that’s not great, but gentlemen, you  definitely [emphasis] need to do a lot better. Women also use more toilet paper than  men, averaging seven square toilet   paper squares per bathroom visit, while men  average two. We actually aren’t sure why,   but if your straight relationship is in a rut, you  now have a sad new way to start a conversation. Perhaps there’s a small upside in men not washing  hands though, as researchers consistently found   that the dirtiest place in a public bathroom  is almost always...the sink?! Yep, toilet   bowls and lids are actually not nearly as dirty  as the place where you’re supposed to wash up. Are you ready to find out where the dirtiest  public bathrooms in the world are? The answer   is simple: airplanes. Airplane bathrooms  rarely get disinfected well between flights,   and one study found E. coli on  the door handles almost 100% of   the time [emphasis]! Now that you know, good  luck holding it from New York to Hong Kong. For some of us, this whole public bathroom  debate is moot, because some people aren’t   able to use a public bathroom at all.  17 million Americans have paruresis,   more commonly known as “shy bladder”. They can’t  use restrooms knowing others are around them, and   they avoid restrooms like the plague. And, one can  only assume, they have the bladders of champions. When you hear a fact like, that after just one  hour of being used, an average public bathroom   has approximately 500,000 bacterial  cells per square inch on its surface,   you might actually be inclined to  develop this shy bladder yourself.   But scientists caution people not to worry  too much. You’re carrying an equivalently   ridiculous amount of bacteria on your body  and on your phone already, and most of the   bacteria shed in public bathrooms dies pretty  quickly in the cool, dry atmosphere there. We’ve listed plenty of the bad - and flat out  disgusting - parts of using public bathrooms,   but there are some ways in which public bathrooms  can be extremely helpful - even save lives! That’s   right. Some womens’ bathrooms in bars and clubs  have posters with codes women can use, usually   either a fake drink order or asking the bartender  for a specific fake employee, that lets the bar   staff know the woman is either feeling unsafe or  in trouble with a date and needs help. The codes   can mean everything from “escort me to a taxi” to  “call the police” if the situation is truly dire. Do you know why mens’ and womens’ toilet  separation came about in the first place?   Contrary to popular belief it’s  not because of different male and   female….forgive us for the pun....“plumbing”.  Rather, up until the late 1800s in the US,   womens’ bathrooms tended to barely exist in the  public sphere at all, as women were expected to   generally stay at home. However, when women  started going out and about in society and   entering the workforce, they obviously needed  restrooms as well - because yes, women do poop,   as much as your new girlfriend may try to hide  it. Give it a few more months of relationship. So bathrooms were designed using the, at the  time, popular “Separate Spheres” philosophy,   which stated that men and women should have  predefined and strictly separated gender roles,   even extending to the spaces they use. Therefore,  the men designing buildings and passing bathroom   code regulations thought that womens’ bathrooms  should be kept separately from mens’ facilities   so the genders could retain those separate spaces. However, modern public bathrooms seem to pose  a lot of social challenges to men as well.   Thanks to urinals, there are a lot of unwritten  social rules men must follow in the bathroom,   such as picking a urinal far away  from another user if possible,   and not making eye contact with  a fellow bathroom attendee. Because of the public, visible nature of urinals,  this also might explain why men are much more   prone to shy bladders than women are, and are  much more likely to report a phobia of peeing   in public bathrooms. In fact, the amount of  time it takes men to start relieving themselves   directly correlates to how many people are  around them. Scientists conducted a study to   observe this effect - something which probably  didn’t help those shy bladders in the first   place - and found that a man alone in a restroom  takes on average 4.9 seconds to start urinating,   while men with a neighbor in the next urinal  take an average of 8.4 seconds to start a stream. Let’s switch gears - to a bathroom’s  musicality! If you had to guess,   at what pitch would you say your toilet flushes?  There is a real answer to this, and it’s fact #23.   Scientists with too much time on their hands have  determined that toilets flush in E flat. So if any   of you decide to use your bathroom time to tune up  your guitar, you have that point of reference now. You might scoff that people would engage in  prolonged activities in a public bathroom,   but studies show that 75% of people in public  bathrooms report using their phones. And not   just to swipe through Instagram and Tinder; many  people will actually make calls in the bathroom.   Good thought to keep in mind next time you  call your friend or co-worker and they sound   strained. It might, really  honestly, not be about you. However, this unfortunate habit means that  phones are about ten times dirtier than your   average toilet seat. So why are you sitting  here worrying about a public bathroom? Go wipe   down your iPhone! Or Android, if you’re THAT  green bubble texter in your group of friends. Our final public bathroom fact explains one of  those annoying smaller mysteries of the universe.   When bathrooms have two-roll dispensers,  they tend to run out at the same time.   Why? Well, because the world seems to be pretty  evenly divided between what scientists term   big-choosers and little-choosers.  Big-choosers will choose the bigger,   fuller roll of toilet paper, and little choosers  will go with the underdog - AKA the scrawnier   roll. Meaning at the end, both rolls tend  to balance out and finish at the same time. Now that we’ve reached this note of harmony and  the end of our insane public bathroom facts,   are you ready to learn a whole lot more about the  world, outside its bathrooms? For more fun facts,   click on this video right here, or this video  instead! And if you have to take a break   before the next video to use the bathroom,  we’re begging you: please wash your hands!
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Channel: The Infographics Show
Views: 1,672,669
Rating: 4.9325852 out of 5
Keywords: public toilet, public toilets, public bathroom, public bathrooms, public restrooms, bathroom facts, public bathroom facts, germs, life hacks, countdown, list, the infographics show, bathroom, toilet, funny, humor, bathroom humor, bathroom jokes, wash your hands
Id: as0_oApd2dU
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Length: 11min 34sec (694 seconds)
Published: Fri Dec 18 2020
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