Public Bathroom Etiquette

Scott's Tip Of The Day: No one enjoys using a public bathroom. But it's basically impossible to go through life without using one now and then. Depending on the situation, the public bathroom experience can be anywhere from relatively painless to traumatizing. Here are some bathroom etiquette tips to keep you from traumatizing an innocent bystander:

1)No grunting.
You're not Magnus Samuelsson competing in the World's Strongest Man competition. There's no reason you should be groaning or grunting while you do your business. It makes everyone else in the bathroom extremely uncomfortable and leaves memories even years of intense therapy can't erase.

2)No talking on your mobile phone.
If you want to text, play games or read articles on the internet then more power to you. But you make it weird and uncomfortable when I'm taking care of business in the bathroom and I hear a long phone conversation coming from the stall next to me. I find the best way to resolve this situation is to flush my toilet repeatedly until the person on the phone gets extremely embarrassed.

3)Don't talk to strangers
I work in the same office building as you. Sometimes we see each other in the hallways. Great. It's still inappropriate to start a conversation with me when I'm at the urinal. I don't want to talk to you. I didn't come to the bathroom to chat it up. I just want to do my business and get out of there. Do I know you? OK, that's fine. But if I don't then anything beyond "hello" should wait until after you exit the bathroom.

4)Lock your stall door.
Don't get mad at me when I open your stall and you're sitting there pooping. These doors have locks on them for a reason. I don't want to have to look under every single stall door in the bathroom to determine if it's free or not. If you leave your stall door open then you're giving me permission to pretty much do whatever I want. If I want to just leave the door open for everyone to see, that's my right. That's what you get for being an idiot. No. Don't give me dirty looks. Hold your head in shame

5)Stick to your own bathroom.
This goes for you women. I know it sucks that the line to the ladies' restroom is long. That doesn't mean it has to be long for the men too. That doesn't mean one lady can take up a bathroom with 5 stalls while her friend stands at the door guarding it telling me "Oh sorry, my friend is in there, she will finish up." Sorry, Lady. I don't know you. I don't care if you or your friend gets embarrassed. I just drank 6 beers, I have to pee, and the game is coming back from commercial in two minutes. I don't have time for this. You took a risk, Lady and it came back to bite you in the ass. You can only blame yourself.

6)Lift the toilet seat when you pee.
This goes for you, gentlemen. If you have vertigo, depth perception problems, bad balance, or you just never learned to pee standing up then you should sit down when you pee. And just because you have good aim doesn't mean it's a good idea to pee with the toilet seat down. Have you ever heard of karma? One day you'll have an emergency and you'll open up a stall door and there'll be pee all over the place. You're not a caveman. Exercise some self control, for God sakes.

Remember people. What goes around comes around. Karma is a bitch. So pay it forward and act like a human being and not a wild animal when you use the bathroom and you'll improve the quality of life for people all over the world.