A Guys Guide to Proper Public Bathroom Behavior Part II

No Talking

Nothing is more irritating than a long conversation in the bathroom, plus there is something innately wrong with talking to someone while you are holding your private parts. (Can you say disgusting?) While carousing through your bathroom trip you may however say hello to someone, or you can give them the head wave, which is where two guys that don’t have to know each other can just nod their heads and salute each other to our dudeness. Anything beyond Hello or the initial acknowledgement of your presence is unacceptable. I don’t care if you are asked a question by the CEO of your company (if at work) or a famous person (hopefully it’s not a senator from Idaho), your goal is to end that conversation as politely or sometimes impolitely as possible.

Look for Feet in Stalls don’t just break down the door

Everyone has had an experience in this arena before, it doesn’t matter if you have someone check the door or actually open the stall door for you to still have the same feeling of panic. What can make you pissed about this is that it’s not like you can’t see shoes under the gaps of the stall. Unless you’re a freak or hiding from a mass murderer you feet are going to be on the ground in the stall. It just doesn’t work that way, but because some dork doesn’t take the time to look for shoes you have to have an awkward moment every time someone checks for occupancy in your stall.

A Guy's Guide To Proper Public Bathroom Etiquette Part 1

Let me start this series of posts off with the statement that I don’t spend more time in the bathroom than the average person. Also, I don’t sit in the bathroom and think of things that annoy me like this. Over time working with larger companies I have noticed a few things that guys do that in my opinion ‘break the rules’ for public bathroom behavior.

Here's an obvious one right out of the gate.

Wash Your Hands.

You wouldn’t believe it, but a lot of guys don’t do this. It’s pretty sad because I would say at least 1/3 of all guys don't do this (At least that I observe). This is probably one of the etiquette rules that I do notice actively. Actually, if you don’t do this my friend at work and I put you on an unwritten list of people that we track. This is the list of people that we do not allow to touch anything we have at work. When we have to let you touch things we then liberally apply GermX to the affected area. Just because you’ve decided to live with the nastiness of not washing doesn’t mean we all have to have your germs.

I think in the spirit of not breaking Rule 2 I’m going to keep these posts to 1 or 2 rules, so I’ll share one more rule and then I’ll save the others for future posts:

Don’t peek over the dividers

Some of these are just simple things that most of us sit there and say “No duh!” Well, this is another one that for whatever reason and it’s not a subtle thing, but guys will look at you while you are peeing in the urinal. I don’t know what type of guy needs to get their kicks from this, but it’s gross. Even if you live a different lifestyle, this is not something that screams sexy to me. This also begs the question….why are dividers in the guy’s restroom only 4 feet high? Oh we have our normal tall Stalls, but for the urinals you’re only getting privacy if you’re 8 years old or a midget. They just beg for guys that are perpetual offenders to break this rule. This makes for one of the most awkward moments in the restroom.