Adventures in the women's bathroom : A male perspective

Just a moment ago I had to use the restroom, yet the men's was out of TP. I was not about to use paper towels, to I decided to use the women's instead. After making sure that it was unoccupied, I wandered in.
The differences are astounding. Here are the observations I made:

• The woman's bathroom smells less like urine and more like something else which I could not place; which isn't exactly good as strange smells make me nervous.
• It is much cleaner.
• They have a full length mirror.
• They have a little tin box full of what, upon closer inspection, look very similar to the little paper bags that they give you your cookie in at coffee shops. These dispensers were in both stalls and were labeled "Sanitary Napkin Disposal Bags".
• There is no graffiti... At all.
• The fan in their bathroom had no off switch (why; I cannot answer).
• The little holes in the marble stall divider (from where I am assuming the old toilet paper dispenser was fastened before it was replaced) were plugged neatly with rolled up toilet paper to insure privacy. The little holes in the men's bathroom are not.
• The woman's bathroom has a little yellow air freshener-mabobber.
• The woman's bathroom has no Urinal.
• The woman's bathroom now has my e-mail address on the wall.

My uncle was a janitor. When I was a boy, around ten years old, I had a summer job helping him out on Saturdays. This usually involved cleaning a bank. Of course, he had me do the bathrooms. The women's bathroom was actually two rooms. Before the long room with the gleaming stalls, tampon dispenser, bright sinks and mirrors was a kind of drawing room with a couch, several armchairs, and a long flat piece of furniture like a bed but covered in leather. The men's bathroom was a row of urinals with puddles under them, stalls with broken locks, sinks and mirrors and arcane messages written with magic marker or scratched through the paint. I asked my uncle why the two were so different. He winked and said, "Women get cramps." Oh. So I said, "Oh." He chuckled and winked again. I got another bucket and some clean rags and went back to work. I have no idea what wisdom he thought he was imparting to me but...

Like Saige in Adventures in the men's bathroom : A female perspective I too worked for a grocery store while in high school and had to clean the bathrooms. But this was a nearly regular task for me. I DREADED cleaning the women's bathroom. They were both small and neither was exceptionally clean, but usually the smell of the women's restroom made me want to puke. On several occasions I had to take breaks while cleaning it just to breathe. I don't know how to describe the smell, but I don't think I'll ever forget it.

While working there I talked to some of the girls I worked with that also had to clean the bathrooms. They told similar tales, but of the reverse! To them the smell of the men's restroom was the more repulsive. I think they were just used to the smell of the women's bathroom, because there is no way the men's smelled worse than that. :) Just kidding. I think it was a case of what we were used too. Us guys were not used to the women's bathroom smell and the girls were not used to the men's bathroom smell. They were probably both equally repulsive.

Also one time when I broke into the school I checked out the girls locker room and was amazed. They had walls between toilets and walls in the showers, but strangely enough it did have a urinal. Our locker room was bigger, but lacked walls for any kind of privacy. It was the same story in the school's restrooms, they had doors on the bathroom stalls the guys had none.

All this leads me to believe maybe men's lack of respect for a bathroom is learned from the fact that we aren't given anything nice to begin with. And when we do have something nice (like stall doors) rather than teaching respect for them when somebody doesn't take care of them they are just taken away.

Well, I'm a janitor (at my university) and I end up cleaning both men's and women's restrooms regularly.

Like sensei, I have also experienced the odd "women's pre-restroom" phenomenon. It's easily understandable why women go to the restroom in packs when the restroom has the most comfortable seats in the building.

Whenever the restrooms have differing color schemes, the women's restrooms are brighter. I suppose there might be an obscure reason for it; I know that the bright yellow "Restroom Closed" signs I put up seem to attract women like swarming flies.

As for women's restrooms being "clean"... well, that takes effort. On average, I find that when I get to cleaning restrooms, the women have seriously trashed the place relative to the men's room. Seriously.

While at a bar in Grand Forks, North Dakota, a couple of friends and I got wasted and decided to go see what the girls bathroom looked like. This came up because we saw so many girls go in and stay that we thought that it had to be better than the men's bathroom, which was small and cramped and smelled like piss.

Upon entering we received a shock.

The bathroom was HUGE. It was furnished with couches, tables, and HAD ITS OWN BAR, complete with bartender. It was obvious now why there were so many girls in here, they could stay in here and get drunk without having to deal with any guys.

All the girls thought it was so funny that we were hanging in their bathroom we got to stay the rest of the night. Ever since then I've always been suspicious of the girls bathroom.