Toilet Tact

Scott Hardie | November 22, 2014
Help me resolve a dispute about office etiquette. Say it's a single occupant bathroom, and you need to use it, and you find the door shut and the light on. Do you knock? Try the handle directly to see if it's locked? Ask aloud if anyone is in there? Some combination of the above? Give up without trying? The discussion about this that I observed was surprisingly long and heated.

Steve West | November 23, 2014
Trying the handle seems the least obtrusive and won't necessarily interfere with the magic of the moment. And it feels great when you hit the jackpot and the door opens to un-occupancy. Although there's no escaping the awkwardness if it opens and the opposite is true.

Lori Lancaster | November 23, 2014
[hidden by request]

Samir Mehta | November 24, 2014
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | November 27, 2014
Yes, I've noticed that too, Samir. All three of you have fine habits as far as I'm concerted. I prefer to knock as a form of announcement and then try the handle, opening the door slowly rather than throwing it open. The person who inspired this conversation believes in asking if anyone is inside, then asking again even louder if there isn't an answer, which seems strange to me, but not as strange as his emphatic insistence that the rest of us were rude for not following this "common rule of etiquette." Huh? Where I work, someone taped up simple printed messages in the bathrooms reminding us to turn off the light when we're done so that the next person can see from the lack of light that the room is available -- which I'd be happy with if the ventilation wasn't also deactivated when you turn off the lights, leaving all kinds of foul smells in the darkness.