When I enter a restroom, the first thing I do is head towards the stalls.
If the stalls are full, or there are no stalls, I exit the bathroom immediately. I don’t stick around and wait. I’m outta there…
I hate going in bathrooms. Hate trying to pee. Hate looking for an empty stall.
I dislike it even more when I have to enter a stall that someone else just leaves. I don’t like standing there in someone else’s stink! Because, let’s face it, that’s usually what a stall is for!
Not for wimps who can’t pee like a man.
Stall Doors drive me crazy!
There’s usually no good way to totally tell if they’re occupied or not.
Sure, in a perfect world, all the stall doors would stay open when they’re empty, but that’s not the case.
It would make entering a partition easy…
But stall doors are a bitch.
I head towards them trying to avoid any eye contact with other guys, trying to enter a stall as invisible as I can, and trying to see which stall is empty at the same time.
You can’t tell!
Some stall doors close even when no one is in them, making them appear full.
Some doors stick and even if you carefully push on them, they still don’t open. Sometimes you really have to SHOVE them just to open them.
There’s no great way to do this properly. Why can’t they make a stall door latch that shows “Vacant” or “Available“? How hard would that be?
Instead, I’m quietly trying to push on doors, look under stalls, and peek through cracks all while being unseen and unheard.
It’s very nerve wracking.
Plus, some guys do go into pee if the urinals are full and some guys don’t latch the door behind them. You push on the door and embarrassingly see that someone’s in there!
Not Cool!
What’s a Paruretic to do?
All I want to do is to locate a safe stall, preferably in the corner, where the adjacent stall is empty as well (crossing my fingers).
I want to pee quickly and quietly and get the hell out. Am I asking too much?
Having Shy Bladder is difficult as it is. But having better stall doors, lower partitions, and music would help ease the anxiety.
I don’t want to be caught peeking at legs under the doors. I don’t want to be looking through cracks in the partitions to see if it’s occupied (and see someone peeking back). That just makes my brain scream!
It doesn’t help the situation when the bathroom is busy and people are watching your every move.
My fear is extreme!
And even when I do find an empty stall, after all that commotion, my heart is racing and may never calm down enough to urinate.
A simple “Vacant” or “Occupied” could have solved that.
Don’t you think?