Monday, November 30, 2009

Feeling Pissy

This is something I have wondered about basically forever: why, in virtually 100% of mens restrooms, is there a substantial amount of urine on either the toilet seat or on the floor directly in front of the urinal?

I've been peeing my entire life. Take it from me, aiming your urine stream into a toilet is not terribly difficult. It's not like you're trying to thread a needle and hit a tiny bulls eye from 50 yards away. Most times you don't even need to use your hands. You can just unzip and let it hang, and there's a pretty good chance you will urinate successfully.

So why are guys ALWAYS peeing on the floor? It's disgusting, on a lot of levels. The fact that I have to adopt a special stance just to avoid standing in a piss cocktail of the previous dozen dudes to use the bathroom before me is annoying. But on a personal level, I find this behavior insulting. It's like littering...when people know they won't be caught for degrading communal property, they are all too happy to go to town. I'm extremely disappointed by this mentality of my fellow man. We should be comrades. We all have to use the bathroom at some point or another, and we should take it upon ourselves to keep it as clean as we can for each other.

But no. Instead, apparently the prevailing thought process is to just whip our dicks out and mark our territory, and damn the poor custodian who has to come in and mop it up at the end of the night. Let alone the rest of us who are just trying to enjoy a meal or make a pit stop in an airport without having to avoid soiling our own clothing in some asshole's human waste.

This kvetch is magnified a thousandfold when I happen to be so unfortunate as to have to go #2 in such an environment. Not only do I have to suffer the discomfort of racing through a very private act while risking total strangers coming and going all around me, I also have to grit my teeth through the indignity of cleaning someone's urine off the toilet seat beforehand. And then hope to god that I got it all as I lower myself down upon that haven for disease and pestilence.

Who are you people? Why do you do this??? Show yourselves!!!

3 comments:

  1. OK, it's me. I am the guy who constantly pees just in front of, or on either side of, or anywhere but, the urinal. Why do I do this? Well, it's complicated, but mostly it's a combination of deep dissatisfaction with my angst-filled teenage life, and a desire to impress my similarly angst-ridden friends with pranks that piss off well-dressed people like you. It's my secret desire that I be accepted and loved by, well, anyone; in the absence of that (thanks Mom and Dad), I vent my frustrations through pissing on the floor.

    Or, at least, that's what I would imagine might be the case if I were an angst-filled teenager. As it happens, I am almost completely angst-free, so I in fact pee in the urinal and rarely spill a drop.

    Speaking of spilling drops, Ethan, it might be good to remember the Splash Effect; that is, even the tiny splash-off of urine from a well-aimed stream, multiplied by scores of users over the course of a urinal's day, can be enough to eventually amass what appears to be a purposefully and maliciously placed puddle. Just a thought.

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  2. Perhaps, but I don't buy it. The Splash Effect, in my estimation, would tend to spray droplets either off to the sides of the urinal or directly back at the urinator and onto his pants (as has been known to happen in poorly designed facilities). But upon thinking on this further, I realize it may be that, in avoiding standing in the pee puddle, bathroom users may be positioning themselves further away from the urinal than is adequate to capture the tapering off stream as the urination winds down...which would account for increasingly more piss to end up on the floor. But even in this case, there must be some initial pee on the floor to begin with that people would be trying to avoid.

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