The urinals in the rear first floor restroom in my current office building are really good.
I’m not sure why urinals differ in this. You would think that best urinal design practices would be pretty firmly established by now. We’ve had indoor plumbing in most public buildings for approaching a century now, and men have been peeing standing up for, well, much longer than that. Nor have urinals been on the technological fast track; I daresay few startling leaps in pissoir mechanics have been made for some time now.
So why, then, do I frequently encounter urinals that reflect the stream into a fine mist down onto one’s shoes? Urinals that require careful aiming into the corner to even attempt to restrict the entire volume to the urinal? Urinals where an unexpected two-pronger will have you dampening your laces? All that’s asked of the device is that it collect 100% of the flow of urine. Shouldn’t be hard.
Although that does disregard the nature of the customer, as it were. I have no problem peeing into a urinal, nor, I suspect, do most men. However. In the office building containing my prior place of employment, someone – or several someones – appeared to have an almost epileptic response when they stepped up to a urinal. Invariably, a restroom that had been equipped with a clean floor in the morning, if you entered it in the late afternoon, had been visited by the piss fairy, sprinkling urine in a diminishing radius all around the floor beneath each urinal.
Sometimes it was so bad I peed in the toilets, simply because I could not approach either urinal close enough to use it.
I don’t know what the problem there was – the urinals were inferior models, that one had to carefully aim into, using the proper angle and hitting the proper spot, and even then there was occasional – but just occasional! – escaped droplets. But nothing that could explain the Niagara-like outsplash that seemed to happen on a daily basis. It amused me to think of some bestial man-horse bellying up to the porcelain and releasing a flow like a fire hose, which spattered and cascaded all around the area. Alternatively, the epileptic I referenced earlier, unable to relieve himself without trembling like jell-o, trying desperately to keep a firm grip on his unit as it lurched to and fro.
But whatever the problem was, it was not helped by the fact that the urinal seemed only vaguely designed to actually catch urine. Peeing on the bare wall, with a drain beneath, would have resulted in as much catchment.
Whereas, as I say, the urinals in the rear restroom here gather up 100% and no mistake. Careful aim for a sweet spot is not required – they have big interior rims and a generous undercarriage, so one just steps up and lets go. American Standard brand. So if there is a completely satisfactory urinal design, why then do people keep making, and buying, the inferior ones?
I can understand certain discrepancies based on purpose; some urinals are very low to the ground, for instance, because some people are short. Those people, I pee on.
No, just kidding. Those people are frequently children – perhaps children of tall people. I’m actually rather a fan of the “one big trough in the ground” school of urinal design, which one infrequently encounters at older airports and suchlike. Not that it’s a great anti-splatter design, but it’s different and sort of amusing.
And speaking of, I’ve had another Idea which I want to share with you. Sadly, it’s not the sort of Idea that will make me any sort of money. On the other hand, were it one of those ideas then I would almost certainly not share it. No, this is an idea for something I would like to see exist but that I myself will probably take no steps towards incarnating.
I came to disdain the human resources class in my business school; the conclusions were obvious, the instruction was pretentious, and there was always a sense that somewhere in the bullshit there was useful information and tools to be had, but the bullshit never stopped coming. However, one useful thing I did acquire from that class was entirely unrelated to the subject matter.
The instructor had a small metal tube, mounted by strings above a bamboo base, which she would strike to begin class. A chime. And it cut directly through the various conversations and other noises going on more effectively than any raised voice might have. If at some point in your life you need to get the attention of a roomful of people, a small chime is the way to go.
Anyhow, I think that the world ought to contain urinals with chimes.
Yes, you may think about that.
I’m thinking some sort of ceramic, loosely mounted tubes – two or three of them – easy to clean, angled properly down so as to not reflect the spray. So when you tinkle, you really tinkle.
Oh, it’s not for every restroom. Certainly not for public restrooms prone to vandalism, or perhaps even workplaces. But they’d be ideal for certain museums, the right sort of modern restaurant, the Exploratorium. Throw a little fun and distraction into what’s otherwise a rather boring off-budget strip of time.
And just maybe get some spastic-pisssing bastards to aim.
- Sun Ra