The only reasonable reason I've heard is it makes it easier to clean/prevent mold growth. Like y'all don't need to worry about drug users at the office.
The reality is that every American has experienced this for their entire lives at this point. The actual popular opinion is "I don't actually care because every public bathroom I have been in since the 40s is like this."
I assume it's because it's cheap infrastructure.
Yeah, being literally as cheap as possible is the main design driver for poop stalls with large gaps. Very forgiving installation, so the cheapest possible labor can put them in to inconsistently built bathrooms with cheap parts using the least amount of materials on the cheapest hinges with the cheapest paint and cheap replacement parts when whatever is in there fails.
Also cheap to repair when it breaks.
Also, some amount of gap at the floor level means the whole room can be sloped down to a single drain when a toilet backs up instead of being contained in a single stall. That is also cheaper.
Eventually, enshittification will hit public restrooms hard and we won't even have dividers at all. Just a single, giant hole in the floor everyone is expected to pee and shit into while a bank of CCTV cameras watches every angle of the room.
I know of one rest stop that offers stalls with doors, but half of the door is removed so that they can see if someone is partaking of questionable substances in there.
I have heard of several, but that's the only one I've seen myself.
I've seen signs for the truck stop showers saying only 1 person is allowed in a shower stall at a time that are clearly only there because dudes be fuckin' in there.
You're all complaining about the gaps, but I once walked into a bathroom which had 5ft doors. The moment I walked in I locked eyes with a guy taking a dump.
It's so hard for people to make meaningful connection, these days, in our modern, tech-driven society.
Let’s not forget the people who attempt to open the stall, notice that it is indeed locked, then proceed to knock on the door
"Wanna help me wipe bud? This one is particularly sticky, I need to eat some more beans"
My middle school didn’t even have doors on the stalls. That was f’d up.
I've heard every excuse, from making sure people aren't doing drugs, jerking off, or having sex in there. The assumption being that if people are given total privacy they'll be up to "no good" in the bathroom stall. I don't know if any of that is true, but I once went to the men's room at a big-city library, and discovered the stall walls were only 4 feet tall. (If that was meant to prevent drug use it wasn't working, there were a couple dudes in there doing the fenty lean, but I didn't see anybody fucking, at least.)
I don’t know if any of that is true,
As someone who worked retail for many years when I was younger, I can assure you that it is absolutely true. People get up to insane shit in public restrooms.
So the non-private pooing is actually continuous with American moral puritanism. That makes sense.
And moral paranoia!
Public library where I grew up had full height stall walls, but the doors had been removed. There were always several homeless people shitting in there. But hey, at least they weren't fucking, right?
Man, reminds me of the old WWII barracks, open shitters.
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to [email protected]
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
