Which Closet?

[robinbloke]

Is it just me, or is there some unspoken law for blokes regarding urinals in any public lav?

I was talking to a female friend about it the other day and sort of half came to the conclusion there are unwritten rules regarding which one you select depending on who is there already...



The situation is thus; you are busting for a leak and head to the nearest public lav; the urinals are arranged thus :-

A B C

Where C is closest to the door and A is next to the wall, the sinks are also nearest C. The stalls are behind the urinals.

[Poll #139532]

Comments

[zotz]

The upshot is that the ideal numbers of urinals to have are (2^n)-1, n being any whole number, as it maximises the chance of not having a neighbour.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Theres a government grant out there waiting to be earnt...

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

It gets worse... there are two existing and easily available sets of rules, and they are not in perfect agreement.

Rules set A (http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/misc/wc.html)
Rules set B (http://www.estimated.com/html/urinal_rules.html)

[omentide.livejournal.com]

There is actually published work on this.

It involved a very patient researcher, a broom and a stopwatch.

It worries me...

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

...that for each of these different scenarios you provided the option of choosing to use the same urinal as someone else.

Maybe I'm just too shy and innocent...

Re: It worries me...

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Cut and paste makes you lazy, plus I wanted to see if anyone would actually choose one that was already occupied.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

There is? Curses! There goes my government grant

[the-lady-lily.livejournal.com]

I should point out I answer as what I think I would do if I were a chap, but since women's toilets don't have urinals I'm afraid that my input may skew the statistics somewhat!

[hobbsthepenguin.livejournal.com]

The directions and then the senarios have conflicting directions and label things differently. Also there used to be a flash game that did this type of test and would correct you if you're "wrong". And yes there is unspoken rules, however they seem to have become spoken in my dorm (co-ed bathrooms) and then to be discussed at lenght at the dinner table, so I've heard all about them and the dislike of the pee toughs that are circular.