So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[tonyb]

Wall-mounted containers for the safe disposal of "sharps" are found in some restrooms in city parks. I'm familiar with one in particular that's frequented by some of our scruffier brethren. But that accommodation doesn't keep some a**hole(s) from deliberately clogging the toilets.

 

[sheeplady]

Today I had someone at a business answer the phone with a "hello."

It was medical billing (which I know is often done by contract by people at home) but could you at least answer with, "Hello, Billing Office" or "Hello, Billing?" You probably know I'm not your friend calling to chat. This is not the first business I've called that I have to ask if they are a business. This was really rare 15 years ago, it seems like if you called a business you knew it.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ I'm just going to say it, while your point is correct, the big picture here is that you called a business and got a real, honest-to-God live person (and it wasn't a sales line). I think you should buy a lottery ticket today, rare things are happening for you.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Parking lot-neighborhood from my apartment-block, leaving used tissues under the car, I'm driving, because they know, the car isn't moving often.

But both parking lot-neighbours are nearly idiots. And autumn will coming soon and blows the nasty shreds away.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Better not looking at this, because much too mouth-watering:

(German) nut-wedges:
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q= nussecken&qs=n&form=QBIR&pq=nussecken&sc=0-0&sp=-1&sk=

 

[sheeplady]

⇧ I'm just going to say it, while your point is correct, the big picture here is that you called a business and got a real, honest-to-God live person (and it wasn't a sales line). I think you should buy a lottery ticket today, rare things are happening for you.

You always can get a real-live-person when you owe them money. They often pick up on the second ring. It's any thing else you want that's a problem.

I've only played the lottery twice. First time I had 4 tickets which I got 'free coupons' for when we went to the zoo as a family. We won $104. Not too bad. Paid for a zoo membership.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

In the past couple of weeks I've contacted 2 companies to ask a question & have received nothing in response.

 

[Stearmen]

The city removed public restrooms in one park.
Now there is no more traffic of unpleasant things occurring.

But now, I make sure I don’t drink too much water when riding my
bike in the park.

We were on a motorcycle ride Saturday, when one of are members raced from the back of the pack to the front and got us to all pull over. Seems he forgot to go before the ride. That was all right, we helped get him in the mood by revving our engines and honking our horns! The wind came up right as he was full stream of course, some one later joked, "now you know why chaps were invented!

 

[sheeplady]

When I was in school they had problems with students doing drugs and smoking in the bathroom stalls, or so they said. They responded by first removing all the doors (including the outer door, not just the stall doors). Later they re-installed the outer door and started locking us out of the bathrooms without stall doors for vast sections of the day.

It was pretty horrible. I don't understand why anyone never did anything about it... I can remember so many mothers being upset that they had to pee in public during events and they were horrified we got locked out.

 

[GHT]

We were on a motorcycle ride Saturday, when one of are members raced from the back of the pack to the front and got us to all pull over. Seems he forgot to go before the ride. That was all right, we helped get him in the mood by revving our engines and honking our horns! The wind came up right as he was full stream of course, some one later joked, "now you know why chaps were invented!

There was a photo years ago, it may even have been uploaded onto the web, I haven't checked. A group of guys going to or from somewhere, football perhaps, or a fishing trip. The coach that they had hired was an old fashioned bus without an onboard toilet. A few beers into their journey and they were pleading with the driver to pull over. At the next layby, the driver duly pulled in, all the guys lined up along side of the bus, hidden from the road. One joker waited until they were in full flow, got his camera ready, then coaxed the driver to roll the coach forward. The resulting picture became something of a classic.

 

[Fading Fast]

When I was in school they had problems with students doing drugs and smoking in the bathroom stalls, or so they said. They responded by first removing all the doors (including the outer door, not just the stall doors). Later they re-installed the outer door and started locking us out of the bathrooms without stall doors for vast sections of the day.

It was pretty horrible. I don't understand why anyone never did anything about it... I can remember so many mothers being upset that they had to pee in public during events and they were horrified we got locked out.

My high school did about the same thing. All the doors were taken off the stalls. I went from middle school with normal bathrooms to these prison house bathrooms and was really thrown. It was the '70s and it was all about drugs, but still, come on!

 

[sheeplady]

My high school did about the same thing. All the doors were taken off the stalls. I went from middle school with normal bathrooms to these prison house bathrooms and was really thrown. It was the '70s and it was all about drugs, but still, come on!

This was the 90s. It was a small rural school. I could handle the doors being off and having teachers watch us use them (them's the breaks, I guess I thought) BUT locking them was a step too far. Some days they'd be locked 3 hours or more, and it was never dependable when they were open. A couple of days I remember they were locked the entire day.

You could use the small bathroom down by the main office, but that was across the school (away from the classrooms) and had only 2 stalls. We only had 5 minutes between classes (for some reason, I feel like it was 3 but 3 minutes doesn't seem long enough), there way no way to make it down there and back, yet alone have time to do anything.

They have to have been violating some law by locking them, and if not, it should be illegal to do that.

It honestly always struck me as sort of malicious behavior by the administration, like something a power-hungry prison warden would do.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I don't think we ever had doors on our stalls while I was there -- not so much due to drug issues as to the school district not bothering to replace them when they were torn off by JDs in The Fifties.

Our schools always referred to the bathrooms as "The Basement." You didn't get a bathroom pass, you got a Basement Pass, and you asked the teacher if you could go to The Basement. Made it all sound grimmer and more foreboding than it really needed to be.

Drugs when I was in school were mostly glue-sniffing, which was commonly done in study hall from a brown paper bag surrepetitiously passed around the back of the room by the troublemakers. There was a student smoking area outside one of the side doors at the high school, and there were always a few Pretend Adults out there puffing away in the cold.

We have no outside doors on the main restrooms at the theatre -- apparently that's a building code thing, even though these restrooms can't be accessed by people in wheelchairs because there's no way for them to get downstairs (there's an accessible unisex in the lobby.) This lack of doors leads to a certain clumsiness when I have to get something out of the supply room, which is right beside the Men's Room, and I can't open the supply door without getting a clear view of whatever is going on at the urinals. Unless I close my eyes, and sometimes that's the best thing to do.

 

[Fading Fast]

This was the 90s. It was a small rural school. I could handle the doors being off and having teachers watch us use them (them's the breaks, I guess I thought) BUT locking them was a step too far. Some days they'd be locked 3 hours or more, and it was never dependable when they were open. A couple of days I remember they were locked the entire day.

You could use the small bathroom down by the main office, but that was across the school (away from the classrooms) and had only 2 stalls. We only had 5 minutes between classes (for some reason, I feel like it was 3 but 3 minutes doesn't seem long enough), there way no way to make it down there and back, yet alone have time to do anything.

They have to have been violating some law by locking them, and if not, it should be illegal to do that.

It honestly always struck me as sort of malicious behavior by the administration, like something a power-hungry prison warden would do.

I would have thought by the '90s - having had two decades to figure it out - they'd have come up with a better answer. Schools in the '70s were still trying to learn how to handle the furies unleashed by the late '60s - until then, kids were pretty compliant and the usual controls and disciplines worked.

Not really understand the full social / cultural changes and timeline back then, I still kinda got that teachers and the administration were rocked back on their heals from all the aggressiveness kids were now bringing. The older teachers were angry or lost and the younger ones weren't sure which side to take.

Also, by the '90s, the tort culture was in full-flower, so I can't image schools wouldn't have gotten sued over that - but your experience is proof that at least some didn't.

Edit Add: And I remember being really angry about the entire concept - it was like being treated like an animal. Even then, I had enough sense of self to feel insulted and mad - put freakin' doors on the stall and figure out how to deal with the problems another way.

 

[Trenchfriend]

When you grab your cup sugar beet-syrup (thicker than honey) in the refrigerator and you forgot, that the last time, the paper-cup was already sprinkled outside with filaments of the syrup.
And your hand is stucked on the cup...

 

[tonyb]

... We have no outside doors on the main restrooms at the theatre -- apparently that's a building code thing, even though these restrooms can't be accessed by people in wheelchairs because there's no way for them to get downstairs (there's an accessible unisex in the lobby.) This lack of doors leads to a certain clumsiness when I have to get something out of the supply room, which is right beside the Men's Room, and I can't open the supply door without getting a clear view of whatever is going on at the urinals. Unless I close my eyes, and sometimes that's the best thing to do.

A person learns how not to see.

It's similar to my take on public breastfeeding. All it takes is the briefest glimpse, even out of the corner of one's eye, to know what's going on. It's not as if the young woman is wearing a hat with a neon "look at me" sign atop it. You want your five-dollar cup of coffee and baby wants its belly filled.

 

[Trenchfriend]

A person learns how not to see.

It's similar to my take on public breastfeeding. All it takes is the briefest glance, even out of the corner of one's eye, to know what's going on. It's not as if the mother is wearing a hat with a neon "look at me" sign atop it. You want your five-dollar cup of coffee and baby wants its belly filled.

And when these helicopter-yummy mummys got serotonin going on and smile at you??

 

[tonyb]

And when these helicopter-yummy mummys got serotonin going on and smile at you??

Then you smile back, I suppose.

I'm getting to be an old guy, or so I suspect that's how I appear to a young woman. And that makes me "safe."

 

[sheeplady]

A person learns how not to see.

It's similar to my take on public breastfeeding. All it takes is the briefest glimpse, even out of the corner of one's eye, to know what's going on. It's not as if the young woman is wearing a hat with a neon "look at me" sign atop it. You want your five-dollar cup of coffee and baby wants its belly filled.

Actually, when I breastfed my son, I often had people not notice what I was doing if he was in a carrier. I can remember once I had him in a sling at a restaurant so he could help himself and went up to the buffet. A gentleman next to me started chatting, halfway through his conversation he said- "oh, you have a baby in there! With red hair!" He called his wife over and we chatted a bit and they both made comments about him sleeping so well in the carrier.

He wasn't sleeping. One of them even patted his head.

Although, with a cover, especially when my son was bigger, people couldn't help but notice. I never tried to hide nursing him, though, if he was hungry, I fed him. I have a thick skin, and in all my life that I've been aware of breastfeeding I've only seen 3 or 4 women nurse in public, I think because it isn't normalized.

 

[HudsonHawk]

We have no outside doors on the main restrooms at the theatre -- apparently that's a building code thing, even though these restrooms can't be accessed by people in wheelchairs because there's no way for them to get downstairs (there's an accessible unisex in the lobby.) This lack of doors leads to a certain clumsiness when I have to get something out of the supply room, which is right beside the Men's Room, and I can't open the supply door without getting a clear view of whatever is going on at the urinals. Unless I close my eyes, and sometimes that's the best thing to do.

I'd like to think what's going on at the urinals is pretty straight forward and unimaginative. If not, I don't want to know any more.