To get the ball rolling this week, we start with an e-mail from one of our beloved readers, which continues last week's restroom theme:
"Public bathroom etiquette such as the newspaper shuffle or the cough to allow newly arriving public bathroomers to become aware there are other bathroomers in the vicinity is key. This prevents uncomfortable situations such as the, "Hey I'm in a bathroom I can do what I want ... oh no someone else was in here!"
Now, my question is, 'Why is this so uncomfortable?'
I mean, where else is there a safe haven for alone time besides public bathrooms? Anyway I've gone off track here -- back to the etiquette.
There are of course those sadistic individuals who don't do the newspaper shuffle or the cough until AFTER the embarrassing action has taken place. Now the power has shifted to the stall resident who basically has just forced the newcomer to leave first to prevent identity recognition allowing the stall resident to retain his alone time."
-- Ross Weinreb, Virginia Tech
I completely agree. The restroom easily is one of the most awkward places of all time. There's so much etiquette involved, you could spend weeks on the subject. For instance, there's the obvious courtesy of urinal separation. Say there are three urinals, and you're the only one. You of course have to take one of the outside ones, in preparation for another person coming to the bathroom. That way they can take the other outside one leaving the middle one as a buffer.
Now the real problem comes when one of the outer urinals is one of those short kid urinals. What are you supposed to do? Do you take the middle urinal, killing the buffer zone? Or do you take the kids urinal, forcing you to crouch a la Billy Madison and then you still look like an idiot?
Anyway, enough of that silliness. On to solving more of the world's problems...
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