Spodsnet: AIBU in using the disabled toilet at work?

There are three toilets on each floor at my work: men’s, women’s, and a single occupancy toilet with a disabled symbol on it. Some of the single-occupancy toilets also have showers and shower curtains fitted in them.

AIBU by using the single-occupancy disabled-accessible toilet?

Other potentially relevant facts: The one on my floor doesn’t have a shower; I prefer them because they stink less and don’t have other people in them; I am not mobility-impaired and neither is anyone else on the floor (inasmuch as one can judge these things through casual observation).

AIBU??

So long as your not using the ladies it shouldn’t be an issue.

“Am I Being Unreasonable”, presumably.

How much use does the disabled loo get? If it’s as close to “none at all” as makes no odds then I’d have no issues whatsoever in going for a ‘luxury poo’ if the mood took me.

Them there loo’s are always being used by blokes here, some run into work, some ride, best place to clean up I say.

Just limp as you walk in and out of the toilet door.

Reminds me of my days of having to go and work in the TI fabrication plant in Dallas. I’d normally get everything out of the way before leaving my hotel room in the morning, but as luck would have it, one day (during my first ever visit) I needed to use the plant loos (nothing particularly wrong in that, being a semicon plant, everything was spotlessly clean) and all was well until I had my slacks down around my cankles, sat on the loo and noticed a frickin’ HALF INCH GAP RIGHT DOWN THE LENGTH OF THE DOOR. What’s worse – it was a busy loo and I could see EVERYONE milling around outside. 😯

Well, that was it – turtle tailed and nothing happening…I had to do a quick grab and wipe and find the only private loo in the building to which I had access – which was a disabled loo in the depths of the basement. I never once felt guilty about using it. 🙂 Mind you, my walk there that day was the campest mince I’ve ever walked – and that’s saying something.

I use disabled loos whenever it’s expedient. Am I wrong? Are there disabilities that require both immediate toilet facilities and ease of access?

Are there disabilities that require both immediate toilet facilities and ease of access?

I would imagine there are yes.

Are there disabilities that require both immediate toilet facilities and ease of access?

Hmnnn, at a guess, I reckon yes!

I use disabled loos whenever it’s expedient. Am I wrong? Are there disabilities that require both immediate toilet facilities and ease of access?

This is precisely why you should not use disabled bogs

I use disabled loos whenever it’s expedient. Am I wrong?

You scumbag.

HALF INCH GAP RIGHT DOWN THE LENGTH OF THE DOOR

Strange that Americans, who are otherwise so prudish, are accustomed to having a crap in public. The public toilets at the Galleria posh shopping mall in Houston don’t (didn’t) even have doors at all, though that was probably to do with drugs and “cottaging”.

This is precisely why you should not use disabled bogs

I’d rather see an able bodied person crap themselves then use a disabled loo….

Theres no need to be so black and white Mike. If an able bodied person was really that desperate it’d be different, but for convenience is different. And there is always the very real chance that a disabled person may crap themself waiting while you are in there.

I never saw the harm in using an unoccupied disabled bog, but a freind with chronic progressive MS pointed out what it could (and had) meant to him.

Sounds like my office. I use the disabled toilet, or “Fortress of Solitude” as I call it, because it’s more comfortable than the normal stalls. A place where a man can read the paper in peace, or maybe do a bit of sudoku or a crossword.

I see nothing wrong with your behaviour.

I’d rather see an able bodied person crap themselves then use a disabled loo….

Even if that person was you ?

I guess it’s the same argument for using the disabled bay at the supermarket “It’s quiet and no one’s using the bay so I’ll park in it.”

You have no idea what’s going to happen in the next 10 minutes but do it regardless?

If the disabled cubicle also doubles as a shower room then I’d happily take a shower in there but not poo.

In New Mexico I stopped at a truck stop and the crapper was just three pans against the wall, no doors or walls or anything 😯 my need to defecate went away after seeing that and ended up using a Arbys.

Have also been subjected to the inch wide gap Darcy was talking about, actually had some kid wathching me untill I told him to go forth, that was in a Wal Mart I think.

Worst bog I have ever encountered was in Chile at a resteraunt in the Atacams desert, trully offensive 🙁

I’d rather see an able bodied person crap themselves

Just go on YouTube, you can watch as much of that as you like.

Can I suggest to anyone who is put off by the toilets in North America that you never travel in Africa. You really won’t have a very pleasant time.

I would imagine there are yes.

Go on? I’m not after an argument, I just want to know so I don’t cause any trouble.

Also – is it only wheelchair users that need the disabled bogs?

As for gaps under doors in the US – an inch? Most public toilets I’ve used have about 18″ under the door, and they are only about 6ft tall. I think it’s to discourage anyone behaving improperly.. but I guess it would also allow you to crawl under the door if you got stuck.

I think using it somewhere quiet where you’re confident there’s no disabled people about is one thing – using them all the time because you’re too lazy to walk up some stairs is another. I do some support work for a guy with disabilities and there are definitely occasions when you might need to get to a loo quickly.

Many things in everyday life generally take longer and are more faffy for disabled people so anything that adds to that is not great really.

Can I suggest to anyone who is put off by the toilets in North America that you never travel in Africa. You really won’t have a very pleasant time.

Hole in the floor at a roadside cafe in Greece. There wasn’t even a handle or anything to hold onto! How are you supposed to squat down over a hole without a handle to hold onto! More to the point, how do you get back up again!!! 😯

I use the disabled loo to change after cycling in.

In 2 years in this building I have never seen a disabled person use it. There are quite a few people with disabilities on the site but not in our building/on our floor. And there are very few people in when I arrive anyway.

I only use it to change in either end of the day. All other toilet requirements I use the normal gents loos

Go on? I’m not after an argument, I just want to know so I don’t cause any trouble.

Have you ever looked after a child ?
If so, need for very urgent access to a toilet should be familiar.

Put that child in a wheelchair and see how much more difficult things get,
Possibly add a multitude of other physical or mental problems into the mix and it gets a lot worse.

Can you honestly not work this stuff out for yourself ? 😐

I’m amazed.

I always use the disabled bog at my office. Rails to hang ones clothes on, a little shelf for accoutrements, padded backrest – what’s not to like. And since I broke the lift playing testing it, wheelchair drivers cant get up to our floor anyway.

If you work in an office that has no disabled workers and is not open to the public I can’t see what harm you are doing in using the facility.

However, using disabled facilities in shopping centres etc. is obviously wrong.

As above really, my comments were in connection with ….

I use disabled loos whenever it’s expedient. Am I wrong?

Which doesn’t refer to a specific “never used” office facility, but a more general useage.

To be honest, with the use of the word “expedient” it suggest he already knows its wrong.

(Or didn’t know what expedient meant but used it anyway ?)

I think he used it because it sounds intelligent.

wheelchair drivers cant get up to our floor anyway.

you do know that not everyone who might need to use an adapted cubicle will be in a wheelchair?

I use the disabled loo to change after cycling in.

I only use it to change in either end of the day. All other toilet requirements I use the normal gents loos
+1 (although I’m guessing not the same loos).

I know from observation that able-bodied colleagues sometimes use the disabled loo, and I’ve always thought that that was a bit off-side.

Hole in the floor at a roadside cafe in Greece. There wasn’t even a handle or anything to hold onto! How are you supposed to squat down over a hole without a handle to hold onto! More to the point, how do you get back up again!!!

They actually aren’t that popular now, lived there for a few years and most places use the normal sit down jobies (which normally look as though a Tsunami of Pi%% has just done the rounds)…

The only thing that worried me about the “Turkish” 🙂 bogs was you’d stand up and find your Red Wood had landed in your pants and not gone down the hole….shudders……

To be fair they pretty much guaranteed a clean breakage…which must never be underestimated.

you do know that not everyone who might need to use an adapted cubicle will be in a wheelchair?

For instance, molgrips, when it’s expedient.

As for gaps under doors in the US – an inch?

They’re not talking about gaps under doors, but round the sides. Where UK cubicle doors overlap the frame, US public thrones typically have the doors inset into the frame; whilst an inch is an exaggeration, they quite often have sufficient gap that you can still see people milling around outside whilst you’re mid-thrutch.

I dunno, pondo, someone has been beating me to it around 4pm the last couple of weeks?

Indeed, as Cougar says, it was down the length of the door. I reckoned on a half inch-ish…whatever it was it was enough. 🙂

My recent experience in Greece (and I go there at least twice a year) is that the standard is much better than the UK. Nepal, now … that’s a different matter …

what’s the official “ruling” on disabled loos? Disabled car parking are (afaik) prohibited to everyone except blue badge holders, fair enough, but what about other stuff? Access ramps are there to help dis/less-abled people get into buildings but I doubt anyone is going to complain about able bodied people walking up and down them. Is there an official line on loos?

I’ve encountered the bogdoor gap in the dominican, presumably US influenced, didn’t overly bother me, like at the urinals just be careful where you look.

About 20 years ago had to use the facilities in a greek bar, was literally a hole in the floor, a porcelain one with feet indents but still a hole in the floor, bleurgh.

I lived in Italy in the 80s. Virtually every public toilet was a squat type. Once you are used to the techniques (such as only pulling trousers halfway down) they actually make perfect sense. There are cultures where it is considered wrong to touch a toilet with anything other than the soles of your shoes and if you think about it, the hygiene implications of full backside contact with a seat that has been used by God knows who else is far more disturbing to the fastidious amongst us than using a Turkish style sluice.

As for using disabled loos, well, as long as you aren’t preventing any disabled person from using them, surely common sense should prevail?

Not everyone is obviously disabled.
Not everyone wants their colleagues to know they have a disability.

Please don’t, unless it’s a genuine emergency.
You mess up someones day and might just leave them in the shit.
Literally.