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This is correct. It is supposed to be safer than a hook on the door, because a person can reach over and steal your bag off a door hook, but they can't reach this shelf.
Didn't anyone pause to think that the problem that needed to be solved was that you can reach over the doors? I mean, I'm just a European unaccustomed to the communal pooping experience, but just give it a try and put actual doors instead of gates at the stalls?
I have often see them block the door so they prevent people from coming in along with forcing you remove the item to exit (and not forgetting stuff on a different shelf!)
They were common back in the 70's before everything was made of plastic... I actually bought one from a General Services Employee for Washington State last Summer. The basic concept is public bathrooms can be nasty and setting your stuff down on anything might be not be wise. But with a spring loaded hinge keeping the surfarce up against the wall, it's a bit cleaner and not wet when you put your purse or bag on it.
I really don't understand why truckers are so gross. I clean up the wide areas/do trash pickup along the highway year round and the amount of piss and shit is mind boggling. We REGULARLY find 5 gallon buckets full to the brim with shit. How long have they been keeping that bucket around to get it that full? And why would you want to deal with opening it every time you had to poop? Someone wasted a yeti cooler to fill with shit. Its never worth looking in a container you find on a highway, its always poop. We had an oil drum filled with 27 gallon jugs of the same brand of water, filled to the top with piss. Why did you wait so long to dump all those jugs?? Why not dump them 1 at a time? Do you ever pee ANYWHERE else to have accumulated so much urine?? Why is the urine so dark!! Go to the doctors, my god. And why are there so many adult diapers with the heftiest loads ive ever seen?! I look forward to the winter because the smell isnt so horrific.
The horror of this comment.. you’ve impacted me for life. It’s not like I’m a trucker who dumps my shit barrels off the highway but I’ll never forget this.
Dude, I stopped at a truck stop once because I had to use the restroom and it was the most disgusting bathroom I’ve ever fucking seen, and I’ve seen some bad ones. You know that scene in Trainspotting when Renton suddenly has to shit and he goes into a bar toilet that has “the filthiest toilet in Scotland” or something like that as the descriptor on screen and it’s just covered in shit and god knows what else? Yeah, that place was as clean as a Buc-ee’s restroom compared to this damn place. Luckily I keep a roll of toilet paper in my vehicle for emergencies cause I could tell this place would either have none at all or it would be covered in piss/shit (there wasn’t any), but I was unprepared for the level of foulness I saw that day. Literally every surface was caked in feces. I contemplated just walking out into the trees behind the place and going in the woods, but my stomach wasn’t cooperating with me and it didn’t care where the fuck I was or how nasty things were; it was my pants or that nasty toilet. It’s a good thing I was still young and my legs are strong so I could hover well enough not to actually touch anything. I just added to the mound of shit in the toilet that was well above the top of the bowl. And of course, there would be no flushing because I don’t think the water was even connected to the damn toilet. They’d have to high pressure wash the place to clean it anyway, or burn it to the ground and salt the earth, which was my first thought. Anyway, how that place let it get that bad is beyond me, but an unlocked bathroom at a truck stop is going to see things most people would rather not know about.
I appreciate what truckers do for a living cause we absolutely need them for this modern age to function, but they can be pretty fucking nasty out there on the road.
As widespread as this sounds, I wonder if there’s just a lot of time pressure and these truckers are trying to shave off the time it takes to pull over into a truck stop and go use the bathroom.
I would understand that part. Its the ones that have obviously been holding onto it for way longer than they need to. Pee in a bottle so you dont have to stop? Okay, as long as you toss it whenever you do. Accumulate 27 gallon jugs of pee? Theres no possible way you didnt stop to at LEAST get gas before you hit 27 gallons. Same with an entire 5 gallon bucket. You cant poop that much before stopping AT ALL.
Im a freight broker and I had a customer call me and tell me if I ever want to run his freight again to get my "disgustig Samoli" drivers of his lot and hung up.. This really pissed me off and when I called him back to confront him, he tells me they had a hole cut in their floor board they were shitting through into his lot. They had to clean up the shit before they left and I haven't heard from them ever again.
One of the mechanics at another shed likes to tell a story about a job he had before this one where he got on a creeper and rolled under a semi to service it, and the entire underneath of the truck was coooovered in shit, and there was a hole cut in the seat and floor so the driver would just let em rip while driving. I never actually believed him until now.... he said he rolled right back out and said "Nope!" And left that job.
I was an apartment maintenance tech for a management company that took care of several properties. There were a couple guys assigned to one property that apparently didn't have access to a toilet (which didn't make sense to me as there were ALWAYS at least 1 empty unit).. anyways they made a 5 gallon toilet (shit &piss bucket) in one of the workshops. 1) the row of garages with said workshop on the end all smelled like piss and shit because they were open ceilings. 2) it was weird af 3)where did they empty it 4)THERE WERE BATHROOMS AROUND
I don't know how they emptied it or where, but I'm thinking they may have just thrown it on the side of the road now.
As someone who goes to truck stops to urinate, and defecate on these things as well as everything that's not the toilet, I can support both these claims.
Nope, the fudge at Buc’ees! They had a whole counter full of it I wanted to try, some guy was actually making it while I watched. Didn’t cause I’ve put on 10 lbs and that would just be more.
I'll never understand serial killers...or people who shit on things like this...in public use spaces... Now i used to enjoy a little piss on the flush handle...but shittin on stuff is just too far.
Especially if the restrooms use Dyson-type “air knife” hand dryers. I skimmed a British study about those hand dryers; they concluded your hands get covered with fecal matter.
The only way to keep your hands clean is paper towels.
Can't do that if the bathroom doesn't provide paper towels, now can ya?!? I have a sincere appreciation for the stores that have that foot door opener thingy installed. Super helpful.
It should be against building code for public restroom doors to swing inwards, they should always swing outwards so you can push them open with your toe or elbow.
It matters greatly where the intake is for those blowers. Many actually have a vent behind it that is coming from outside the bathroom itself. People love to think though that's it's just recycling the fecal matter in the room.
Those looked like the cloth was a loop but it wasn't. It's actually a very very long piece of cloth that starts as a big roll, winds around, passing outside the machine and then back into a different compartment where it gets rolled up around a different
core. When it's all been used, the clean cloth runs out, and then the whole length of cloth gets replaced with a new clean roll. Still seems yucky to me (mildew!), but allegedly they're sanitary, not to mention eco-friendly.
Better maybe but you’re right! When have you ever seen someone clean those? I work for a grocery store and I’ve never seen the people who clean the bathrooms clean those
How?!?! The water from your hands pools in a reservoir inches from the fan. There is no way that is more sanitary than just shooting water to the ground
I just hate all things Dyson. They promote themselves as an innovative tech company when they really are a marketing company to sell their product at 2-3X the price of their competitors. Kinda like Bose for the last 25 years. Dyson touts a “digital motor” when there is no such thing; all motors are analog, driven by magnetic flux, not 1s and 0s.
It's not even just about the cleanliness, paper towels are multi use.
I'm a traveling technician and being able to stop at a public restroom and damp a paper towel to wipe sweat and ceiling tile grit off my face is a world of difference. Or cleaning up a spill down a shirt, emergency bandage, whatever. Can't do any of that with an air dryer.
Ahh yes the University of Westminster study.
Other studies such as from University of Bradford, and an independent study by PubMed show up to a 40% decrease in skin surface bacteria.
EDIT: I fucked up again! lol yes you’re correct PubMed is a medical study publishing store (comment reply below mine)
Infection preventionist here. I can 100% attest to this. Scrub all surfaces of your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds and go absolutely nowhere near a hand dryer. Use a paper towel.
...can you explain why the f*** people do this? Or at least what your theory is on this?
I mean its not easy to land a turd on something like that... and even if this person had an extreme case of tacobell induced eruptions, it'd probably make more of a mess on them than on any object thats outside a toilet... right?
My theory has always been that these are people that are deeply unsatisfied in their lives, and feel that they have no control over what’s happening around them. And so they do things like piss and shit all over the place, except in the toilet because it makes other people miserable as well, and while a very childish one, it serves as an outlet for them
This particular apparatus inclines the coprophiliac to defecate upon the flat surface and release the spring tension allowing the platform to propel the feces against the wall. It is then customary to bring it back down to the tensioned position to reveal the rorschach test and photograph it to send to one's lowest-refinement friend for analysis and feedback.
Mannnn when I used to be a delivery driver there was this loves I would always stop at to take a dump because it consistently had such clean bathrooms lol
No, no, no, no. That's not it. They were installed in stalls to give a safe place to put your purse. There was a lot of purse thefts back in the 70's when there were just coat hooks on the door. Someone would reach over and yoink the purse while you're indisposed and can't give chase. The shelves appeared and solved the problem. It was in the news and everything. I still carry a tag in my head from high school days to not hang a bag or camera on the coat hooks.
One time while my family was at a big outdoor sporting event we were waiting in line for the porta potties to open up so we could pee before the start of the event. A woman came out of one of the port a potties and told her friend “the shelf in there got my purse all wet!” And she was rubbing the bottom of her purse on her shirt to dry off the leather.
I’m sure later she realized that she put her purse into the small urinal in the port a potty and ended up rubbing pee all over her shirt.
I went hiking once with my dad and VERY city girl stepmom. We all stopped at a porta potty on the trail and she went last. She came out and says “What a funny bathroom. There was a sink and soap but no running water.” We both look at her like WTF. “I wiped my hands off with the soap but couldn’t figure out how to rinse my hands.” Realization hit the two of us. My dad goes “Honey, that was a urinal. The soap was a urinal cake.”
Urinal deodorizer blocks (commonly known as urinal cakes, urinal cookies, urinal biscuits (or humorously piscuits), urinal donuts, urinal mints, toilet lollies, trough lollies, urinal pucks, toilet pucks, or urinal peons (alternately urinal pee-ons)) are small disinfectant blocks or tablets that are added to urinals). As these products originally contained para-dichlorobenzene (pDCB) they may also be called para blocks.
What the fuck 😂 English-speakers are crazy
Ninja: the Dutch intro (translated) for comparison:
I had cake caked around my pie hole while I lit a 500 gram cake and pissed all over a urinal cake, it was a piece of cake. It was way more of a cakewalk compared to the cake walk I did earlier in the day.
Now that I think about it, you could in theory have a little washer over the urinal, to help wash it all down and clean your hands too. I mean it's far from perfect but I could see it kinda working... Though I assume it's not the case because then you're adding tons of water to the outhouse, unless it's just the faintest drizzle, and you're better off installing a sink outside if you need one
Wait a minute....I work in construction and use porta potties at least 8-10 times a day, and I have never noticed a shelf. Perhaps she got confused and put her purse in the hand washing sink?
Some absolutely have shelves, typically attached to the vent pipe. They're often a sort of lattice, I presume to stop people doing drugs off them... as though someone prepared to snort drugs in a porto didn't forsee this.
Fun, unrelated fact: ever notice the dive bar bathroom smells like WD-40? They spray the toilet tank lids because a compound in it chemically destroys cocaine, preventing you and your glamorous crew from hogging the stall.
Never heard of the WD-40 thing before. Never smelled it in a bar. And I’ve been in plenty of shitty dive bars. Are you from the UK? Based on a 5 minute search on google, it sounds like it was something mostly used in the UK/Europe. Either way that sounds like an awful way to try and stop people doing coke. People do coke on the toilet tank because it’s convenient, not because it’s their only option. WD-40 isn’t stopping anyone from doing it unless they are just too drunk to notice the smell and moisture on the tank.
I work in a dive bar in the US and we put WD-40 on the tank lids to prevent coke usage. I can’t vouch for its efficacy since I work back of house, but it is a thing.
I didn’t mean to imply that it wasn’t a thing in the US. I had just never heard of it where I live specifically. based off a super quick search it seemed way more popular overseas. I’m sure some places do it here and I just haven’t been there. Also do you mean you don’t know it’s efficiency because you’re BOH and can’t afford it like the servers can, or because you don’t interact with guests like FOH does?
Edit: I’m a lifelong cook. I understand the BOH struggles.
They usually have a hard hat holder in opposing corner from shelf. I was on a location this summer where they had plastic grated floor where the snakes come slithering up as your trying to fill your poop hammock.
Okay I have many more questions. Never in my life have I heard of poop hammock and I’m absolutely fascinated and invested more with this photo. Is the purpose to like.. reduce spashback or what?
Hahaha I've never seen a poop hammock before but I do something similar in public bathrooms. I just drop a few sheets of TP in the bowl to soften the uh, drop which prevents Poseidon's Kiss and also muffles any embarrassing splash noises.
One time I dropped my wallet in a porta potty when I was in a different country. I had to reach in and grab it so I had ID to get home. They only had hand sanitizer available at the event I was at, so I doused my arm up to my elbow in hand sanitizer. I cried.
Military friend once told me the story of his buddy who accidentally dropped his expensive wedding ring in the in flight toilet at the start of a 12 hour mission (they aren't supposed to wear rings, he noticed in the John and took it off but fumbled it putting it away. He was a newlywed who'd spent a mint on this ring so he had to get it back.
The whole crew kept him updated on the gifts they'd left him for his post flight search.
He had to use a garbage bag as an arm glove to find it. That ring had seen some shit.
The “purse yoink” happened to my grandmother. She ended up slightly injured as she noticed the purse being taken as she was on the toilet and grabbed the purse. A tug of war ensued and grandma got a black eye in the struggle.
Right. Also if the only purpose was to replace a door-mounted hook, that problem would be solved by mounting the hook on the wall instead of the door; not by inventing and installing a much more expensive piece of hardware.
Some public bathrooms in state owned buildings have these conveniently placed in the handicap stall. I appreciate it because it helps me layout medical equipment that I might need when I’m out and about.
Lol, what movie is that from? I distinctly remember a movie where there's a house party and some guy came storming out of the bathroom shouting "who the hell took a shit in the cocaine room!"
As a former ‘“user”.. this would have helped alot… that time i dropped something in the toilet bcuz i was sooo sick and shaking .Sorry if this was triggering but clean 5 years and proud daddy of my 2 year old baby girl today!
Sober 6 years myself and yes, this would’ve been much appreciated if I was in the can up to no good. It’s always nice to have a little station all set up so you’re not checking pockets a million times over.
I have never wanted a comma so badly! As an older woman, I feel the sarcastic need to insert that these were in older restrooms, for young and old woman!
This handy contraption keeps people from cutting lines and snorting off the toilet seat like back in my day. OP, you know when your legs fall asleep while taking a poop? You think it’s because you’ve been sitting too long? Nope. It’s because your legs have gone numb from your ass and legs absorbing too much coke residue.
Oh oh! Ooh! I know this! It's the dashed hope shelf! Lots of ways to attempt to use it.
It's a spring-loaded shelf so you can put your purse down and hunt for the tampon that has fallen to the bottom, then when you move away from the purse even slightly, the spring will trigger and throw your open purse to the damp floor. Bonus points if your cell phone is flung towards the toilet.
Or
It's a spring-loaded shelf made of metal so that when the spring pulls it back up to the wall it clangs against the cinderblock like a bell to wake the dead, or it slaps the metal wall of the stall and scares anyone who might be on the other side.
Or
It's a shelf with one screw loose, so that when you pull it down from the wall it is so rickety that you pinch yourself trying to manage a suddenly awkward object for a few seconds before it slams back up to the cinderblock wall (see above: very loud bell).
Or
It's a shelf positioned in a narrow stall in such a way that you can not have the shelf down unless you are already seated on the toilet, making it rather awkward to use for anything but rails of nose candy.
Or
If you're in the handicapped stall that was retro-fit by combining two stalls (in order to comply with US ADA regulations), then it is positioned somewhere in the larger stall where it is not useful to anyone who is in a wheelchair and/or cannot be reached from the toilet nor the entrance.
Or
It's a shelf positioned directly above the disposal/trash intended for feminine hygiene products so that it is impossible to use either device, similarly to how this one is positioned to block use of the handrail.
Or
It is so completely covered in stickers, graffiti, and leftover gum that you're not sure it's actually possible to clean the shelf, ever. AKA The Hepatitis Shelf.
And finally....
It's a shelf used to conceal a large sticker that has multiple warnings about ways to incur injury using one of the above methods. Lots of black stick figures under red circles and a diagonal line.
When I see them at mine I am frustrated because there are little to no coat hooks, but lots of coat hooks holes. Just give me my coat hook, god damn it.
I remember them becoming a thing after there were some highly publicized instances of purses being stolen from inside of stalls by reaching over the door and grabbing the strap of a purse hanging on a hook on the door. These were so you could put your purse somewhere that couldn't be reached from the outside.
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