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Being able to pop into a restaurant or coffee shop or bar to use the restroom real quick used to be a totally normal thing. As someone who commutes exclusively via public transit, I frequently find myself needing to find an available restroom wherever I’ve gotten off the bus or trolley. Some places still let me walk in and use their restrooms without paying; however, even the food court at my local shopping mall now has a lock on the bathroom door, requiring a code which has to be provided to paying customers by one of the food vendors. I found this shocking when they implemented it, but the reality is that same bathroom has often been closed for cleaning at very inconvenient hours of the day, usually because some homeless junkie has made it filthy in some way. This is just yet another tax which normal people are forced to pay because of the existence of a massive parasitic underclass of homeless. A normal middle-class person should be able to enter a public establishment and take two minutes to use the bathroom without impediment, just as a basic courtesy offered between human beings, but such a system cannot survive the proliferation of a class of individuals who are by nature abusive of that trust.
As I've reached the age when the need to urinate comes every hour, often suddenly and strongly, even more often if I've just had a few beers, I've had to be mindful of this; when I take the Metro home from DC I always make a stop at the Harris Teeter (which still has open restrooms) before the half-hour walk to my house.
Visiting Phoenix last spring, I felt the need hit me while walking through ASU's downtown campus, so I trailed someone into the Walter Cronkite Journalism School building. I did manage to relieve myself but was peremptorily ordered out by a security guard despite the fact that I could by no means be mistaken for homeless. When did big-city university campuses start closing off their buildings to outsiders?
And supermarkets are supposed to always have open restrooms, but at a Fry's in Tempe there were those keypads on the doors. I pleaded urgent need at the customer service desk and they said they'd send someone over to let me in; thankfully someone left the men's room within a couple of minutes. And so far as I know, nobody ever came to open the door, unless they arrived and left while I was inside.
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A perfect example of the tragedy of the commons in action. Amazing.
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Funny story about this. The summer before I started law school I took a job painting houses. I was out in the sun on a ladder all day and, consequently, I drank a lot of water. I had just moved to the city and one job was only a few miles from my house, so I walked there. Well, I'm on my way home and all that water catches up to me, so I start looking for a place to relieve myself. I pop into a random bar figuring I'll just buy a beer if I have to, but as soon as I step inside I realize that something isn't quite right. There are no doors on the bathroom. And while a bar not having any women present isn't exactly uncommon, the men were acting a little friendlier with each other than one would ordinarily expect. Having never been in a gay bar before, I unnecessarily freaked out a bit, not knowing if there was some etiquette norm I'd be violating, so I glanced around the room like I was looking for someone before turning to leave. As I'm walking out of this place I see my ex girlfriend getting off of a bus. I just waved and kept walking.
I'm just imagining it slowly dawning on you like.
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A normal middle class person can do that, it just takes asking. If you’re normal and middle class they’ll give you the code, 9/10 times. If you’re a wigger they won’t, if you’re homeless or look like a drug user they won’t.
Yeah, but standing in a line to get the code for the bathroom is still annoying.
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I’ve found that this is only sometimes the case. I’ve had plenty of places give me the code upon asking, but I’ve also had a number of employees tell me it’s against their policy to let non-customers use the restroom. Chain restaurants seem to have stricter guidelines around this, probably for liability reasons, or just employees not feeling empowered to make autonomous common-sense decisions.
Perhaps this is a Texas-California cultural difference- it would be extremely rare for me, a non-teenaged white guy with a conservative haircut and no tattoos, to be refused a bathroom code, regardless of the actual corporate policy- and that policy is understood to be there so as to protect employees who refuse access to drug addicts.
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Just dropping a couple bucks in the tip jar is usually enough
At that point it's probably cheaper to buy a bottle of water.
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