Restroom Curiosities

I work in an office building, and when I was on the ninth floor, there was one woman who I never saw or heard washing her hands after using the restroom. I would see her go in, hear the flush, hear the sound of the stall door unlatching, then I'd hear the exit door make its telltale squeak. No sound of running water at the sink. No sound of the soap dispenser. Eeeeew! Didn't her mama raise her right?

Some mornings, I'd see this same woman reaching with her bare hands into the ice cubes in the break room fridge to fill up her water cup. I'm not an ice cube user in general, but she certainly put me off the idea at work.

Now that I'm on the tenth floor, there's another woman whose restroom habits are odd. Yes, she washes her hands, but under the door I've seen her feet facing the toilet for long periods of time. I suppose it's possible that the zipper or button on her slacks is giving her trouble. But on a couple other occasions, I saw her standing up and pulling toilet paper waaayyy up in the air multiple times as far as her arm could reach. I don't know what that's all about. It makes me wonder what other unusual habits she may have.

It also makes me wonder if other people see some of my habits as odd (Yes, I wash my hands. No, I don't stand in front of the toilet or pull toilet paper up over my head.) and watch me for other curious activity.

Finally, I saw an article several months ago about Japanese public restrooms. I haven't been able to find the article I originally saw, but this item includes information about the Sound Princess device (scroll down to the "Japan-specific accessories" heading). It's a motion-activated mechanism that makes a toilet-flushing sound. These are very popular in the women's restrooms in Japan, so nobody else will hear what the women are doing in their stalls. The office building management companies where the Sound Princess is installed have found that their overall water use has decreased.

It's not a bad idea, even for the US, when you consider how much work time is wasted while women (I can't speak for the men) sit in silence until everyone else leaves the restroom, so nobody knows who it is that might be doing what the rest of us don't want to know.

I'm not even going to start on the European varieties of toilet paper discussion. That's a whole different subject.