If you're like me and always have to use the restroom, then you have probably used more than your fair share of public restrooms. I've used them all—from ones in pristine, fancy restaurants complete with a vanity room and full length mirrors, to disgusting porta potties that probably weren't emptied in months. Here are 25 public restroom struggles that I'm sure people with small bladders can relate to.
1. How the line for the ladies' room always stretches to Honolulu and back, but there’s never a line for the men’s room.
2. When the restroom is closed for cleaning, and the next available bathroom is three miles away.
3. When the restroom finally opens again after cleaning, and within two minutes, the poor restroom attendant’s hard work has gone to waste.
Get it? Waste? Because we’re talking about public restrooms?
4. When the stall won’t lock (or doesn’t have a lock at all).
And then you have to find a way to position the door so it won’t pop open mid-stream.
5. When people leave behind a nice little gift for you, aka they forget to flush.
6. Pee and/or other bodily fluids are left on the toilet seat.
7. Seriously, though, haven’t people ever heard of the saying, “If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be neat and wipe the seat?”
8. When you’re trying to do your business in peace, and the bathroom becomes more crowded than NYC on New Year’s Eve.
9. Toilet paper everywhere.
10. Or the lack of toilet paper.
Then you have to awkwardly bother the person in the stall next to you for some.
11. Unless you’re alone; then you’re up you-know-what's creek without a paddle.
12. Refusing to touch the germ-ridden toilet handle with your hand so you have to pull out your Tae Kwan Do moves and flush the toilet with your foot.
13. When the toilet has an automatic flusher and it flushes right in the middle of nature's calling.
14. Or when you’re finishing up your business and much to your horror, the toilet won’t flush.
15. And of course, that only happens when you just did number two.
16. The graffiti on the bathroom stalls.
17. Especially the ones that say, "I Heart (insert name here)."
I didn’t realize that a public restroom was the place to confess your undying love for your crush or significant other. (Well, I suppose that’s better than pulling a Tom Cruise.)
18. Flailing your hands around and practically having to do the chicken dance in order to catch the attention of the automatic sinks.
19. When the automatic sinks refuse to work so you have to play Russian roulette with them and find one that works.
(Sorry, couldn't pass that one up. Moving on...)
20. When the restroom is all out of soap.
21. And paper towels.
22. Or they have those annoying air-dryers that never seem to work.
23. Always making sure you have a bottle of hand sanitizer on you to use after the ritual of using a public restroom.
24. Forgetting your hand sanitizer at home, and feeling the germs from the restroom crawling all over your hands for the rest of the day.
And finally…
