6 ms·

>Not being able to use toilets is, [...], but it probably adds to the feeling of being disrespected. Words like "dehumanizing" and "disrespected" are being use

by jasode 5y ago

>Not being able to use toilets is, [...], but it probably adds to the feeling of being disrespected. Words like "dehumanizing" and "disrespected" are being used but we also have to remember that truckers are not the only ones that care about bathrooms. It's also the workers in the office who don't want to be dehumanized by cleaning up an inconsiderate trucker's piss and poop. As someone who used to clean dirty public toilets as part of my first job, this old video showing the owner of the company how to clean his office toilets has always stuck with me. He even cites the common problem of truckers leaving a mess for office workers to clean. Deep link: https://youtu.be/XlHWkdfZmb4?t=2m59s https://youtu.be/XlHWkdfZmb4?t=2m59s Sure, many truckers are considerate and clean up after themselves but the few bad apples ruin it for the other truckers. The office workers don't want to deal with disgusting bathrooms. Until we have robots in the future cleaning the toilets, there will be somebody getting dehumanized by cleaning up poop & piss. What are the office workers' options? - clean up after drivers (dehumanizing work) - deny bathrooms to drivers I feel bad for the good drivers but unfortunately, some disrespect the office workers because someone else's bathroom is not the driver's problem. What's the solution to avoid dehumanizing people?

xwdv 5y ago
> It's also the workers in the office who don't want to be dehumanized by cleaning up an inconsiderate trucker's piss and poop. There is a crucial difference. For the workers this is their job. For the truck driver, taking a shit is a fundamental human right. If you don’t want to clean up shit? Don’t take that job. But a truck driver doesn’t get to decide he no longer has to take a monstrous shit.
beebeepka 5y ago
Somewhat offtopic but your story reminded me of the time I went to a KFC to use the facilities and found a huge brown turd on the water tank. Right there on top of it. I wonder how often does something like this happen. I've seen my fair share of messes but that was clearly intentional for no good reason
908B64B197 5y ago
> It's also the workers in the office who don't want to be dehumanized by cleaning up an inconsiderate trucker's piss and poop. Just have the maintenance contractor come and clean mid day and at night. What type of business has the regular employees clean the bathroom anyways?
tjpnz 5y ago
If office workers were barred from all but one toilet in miles I'd guess the seats and walls would be just as caked in shit and piss.
- jasode 5y ago
  >If office workers were barred from all but one toilet in miles I'd guess the seats and walls would be just as caked in shit and piss. Not in my experience where the office workers had only a single bathroom. The feedback mechanism that keeps the single bathroom clean is the embarrassment of leaving a mess for the next coworker. Everybody knows each other. You can't leave an explosion in the bathroom and just walk away. The difference is that drivers are transient so they don't have the same social pressure. They drive away so they don't face any backlash. Same reason why truckers complain about dirty bathrooms at truck rest stops. Nobody is accountable to the next person and no embarrassment for not cleaning up after one's self. Hence, public bathrooms become disgusting.
  - ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
    "I'm never going to see these people again, might as well defecate on the floor and urinate on the toilet paper" is my natural attitude, too </s>
    - lovemenot 5y ago
      You said that as joke, but really I want to understand how this could even occur. I am in Japan and such behaviour is inconceivable. Even as an extreme outlier. What has to happen / not happen in someone's life, where that kind of calculus becomes possible? My naive guess is that this is a problem of socialisation, which allows - even encourages - ass-holery of many kinds. Wherever "Fuck you, buddy" is thought of as a smart way to get ahead, public toilets will not remain clean.
  - zo1 5y ago
    How about we put a camera in the stall with some ML and facial recognition? Problem solved if you ask me.
ta988 5y ago
Thesd "robots" exist, there is an hotel chain in Europe that has self cleaning toilets and showers.
- jasode 5y ago
  It isn't just the self-cleaning toilet that's important but the whole restroom. For that objective, the self-cleaning restrooms I've seen reposted often is this one that also washes the floor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CCI-ysfFr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CCI-ysfFr8 But the whole 360-degree spinning mechanism is too big to be retrofitted at existing restrooms in warehouses and offices. The "robot" I was envisioning was something like Boston Dynamics robots with articulating arms that could clean like a human janitor. This would work at all existing restrooms. Until that future tech happens, it's the office workers themselves who are stuck cleaning the restrooms because unlike busy airports, they don't have janitors constantly standing next to the restroom door to keep them clean.
  - treeman79 5y ago
    There was a documentary on self cleaning ones in New York. From what I recall they got so bad that even drug users didn’t want to use them. Plus they were extremely expensive. This was 20 years ago.
crispyambulance 5y ago
In civilized countries, public toilets in places like highway rest-stops and train stations get 24 hour maintenance. The best way to fund that is to have everyone pay a nominal fee to use the facilities.
- Meph504 5y ago
  The fault in this logic, is that rest stops in many places are on large highways and interstate systems, which is nice for travelers but when truck drivers are making long haul deliveries, when they can drive they want to drive, and not stop at rest areas except for required break time. The real issue comes in when they have to sit in a shipping yard for 10 hours waiting for their cargo to be loaded, or a bay open to be unloaded. This is where the local facilities issue comes in. And rest stops are effectively useless for local deliver people (ups/fedex/amazon/etc..) because rarely do their routs take them on the roads to make them accessible. And lastly, the number of public rest stops in the US has plummeted with the increase in gas stations, and state budget cuts. On top of all this, its just the way the routing, and time constraints on delivers are set up, they don't allow for going off route for 10 to 20 minutes to find and use a public toilet. The problem is solvable, but it isn't about available facilities, its about being fair to workers and not making using the rest room cost them money, or penalize them in review.
- jdsully 5y ago
  The US has a good network of public run rest stops on the interstates. The bathrooms aren’t spotless but have always worked in a pinch. There’s one every few hundred miles. Truckers prefer commercial truck stops but I usually see a few at the public ones when I stop there.
  - clem 5y ago
    The network of rest stops varies. In Washington State, they recently closed a line of them along the I-5 due to vandalism and a lack of employees to maintain them.
    - coryrc 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
newaccount74 5y ago
I think the best thing about the toilet in the video you linked is that there are cleaning supplies in every room! I don't think there's anything dehumanizing about cleaning up shit and piss. If you've ever cared for children or elderly people you quickly get used to it. But it's hard to clean up a mess with just toilet paper! It's also natural that toilets get a bit dirty. If lots of people use them, they just get dirty, even if everyone is considerate. You don't deep clean toilets after every use. But if there are cleaning supplies available, every toilet user can clean the toilet to their own standards before use! I'd love that!
- jasode 5y ago
  >I don't think there's anything dehumanizing about cleaning up shit and piss. If you've ever cared for children or elderly people you quickly get used to it. Yes, parents with babies and caring for a bedridden relatives reminds us that human excrement is a natural part of life. But it's not contradictory for those same people to not want their bathroom degrading into dirty public restrooms. Especially when it's caused by strangers who are inconsiderate rather than relatives who are helpless (babies & elderly). Sure, we can all clean up excrement if we have to but the circumstances matter.
  - nullstyle 5y ago
    Daycare workers clean up the shit of children not their own. There's nothing degrading about cleaning up shit and piss; The degradation comes when you're doing it for minimum wage as a second job.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Beldin 5y ago
      The degradation might also come from the fact that someone who is capable of steering a truck certainly is capable of wiping his ass and of not leaving an exploded loo behind... but they literally didn't care enough to clean up after themselves. I mean: someone literally shits over your work area, someone who must be able to handle themselves better. Kind of hard not to take that as dehumanising.

by jasode 5y ago

xwdv 5y ago

> It's also the workers in the office who don't want to be dehumanized by cleaning up an inconsiderate trucker's piss and poop. There is a crucial difference. For the workers this is their job. For the truck driver, taking a shit is a fundamental human right. If you don’t want to clean up shit? Don’t take that job. But a truck driver doesn’t get to decide he no longer has to take a monstrous shit.

beebeepka 5y ago

Somewhat offtopic but your story reminded me of the time I went to a KFC to use the facilities and found a huge brown turd on the water tank. Right there on top of it. I wonder how often does something like this happen. I've seen my fair share of messes but that was clearly intentional for no good reason

908B64B197 5y ago

> It's also the workers in the office who don't want to be dehumanized by cleaning up an inconsiderate trucker's piss and poop. Just have the maintenance contractor come and clean mid day and at night. What type of business has the regular employees clean the bathroom anyways?

tjpnz 5y ago

If office workers were barred from all but one toilet in miles I'd guess the seats and walls would be just as caked in shit and piss.

jasode 5y ago
>If office workers were barred from all but one toilet in miles I'd guess the seats and walls would be just as caked in shit and piss. Not in my experience where the office workers had only a single bathroom. The feedback mechanism that keeps the single bathroom clean is the embarrassment of leaving a mess for the next coworker. Everybody knows each other. You can't leave an explosion in the bathroom and just walk away. The difference is that drivers are transient so they don't have the same social pressure. They drive away so they don't face any backlash. Same reason why truckers complain about dirty bathrooms at truck rest stops. Nobody is accountable to the next person and no embarrassment for not cleaning up after one's self. Hence, public bathrooms become disgusting.
- ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
  "I'm never going to see these people again, might as well defecate on the floor and urinate on the toilet paper" is my natural attitude, too </s>
  - lovemenot 5y ago
    You said that as joke, but really I want to understand how this could even occur. I am in Japan and such behaviour is inconceivable. Even as an extreme outlier. What has to happen / not happen in someone's life, where that kind of calculus becomes possible? My naive guess is that this is a problem of socialisation, which allows - even encourages - ass-holery of many kinds. Wherever "Fuck you, buddy" is thought of as a smart way to get ahead, public toilets will not remain clean.
- zo1 5y ago
  How about we put a camera in the stall with some ML and facial recognition? Problem solved if you ask me.

ta988 5y ago

Thesd "robots" exist, there is an hotel chain in Europe that has self cleaning toilets and showers.

jasode 5y ago
It isn't just the self-cleaning toilet that's important but the whole restroom. For that objective, the self-cleaning restrooms I've seen reposted often is this one that also washes the floor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CCI-ysfFr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CCI-ysfFr8 But the whole 360-degree spinning mechanism is too big to be retrofitted at existing restrooms in warehouses and offices. The "robot" I was envisioning was something like Boston Dynamics robots with articulating arms that could clean like a human janitor. This would work at all existing restrooms. Until that future tech happens, it's the office workers themselves who are stuck cleaning the restrooms because unlike busy airports, they don't have janitors constantly standing next to the restroom door to keep them clean.
- treeman79 5y ago
  There was a documentary on self cleaning ones in New York. From what I recall they got so bad that even drug users didn’t want to use them. Plus they were extremely expensive. This was 20 years ago.

crispyambulance 5y ago

In civilized countries, public toilets in places like highway rest-stops and train stations get 24 hour maintenance. The best way to fund that is to have everyone pay a nominal fee to use the facilities.

Meph504 5y ago
The fault in this logic, is that rest stops in many places are on large highways and interstate systems, which is nice for travelers but when truck drivers are making long haul deliveries, when they can drive they want to drive, and not stop at rest areas except for required break time. The real issue comes in when they have to sit in a shipping yard for 10 hours waiting for their cargo to be loaded, or a bay open to be unloaded. This is where the local facilities issue comes in. And rest stops are effectively useless for local deliver people (ups/fedex/amazon/etc..) because rarely do their routs take them on the roads to make them accessible. And lastly, the number of public rest stops in the US has plummeted with the increase in gas stations, and state budget cuts. On top of all this, its just the way the routing, and time constraints on delivers are set up, they don't allow for going off route for 10 to 20 minutes to find and use a public toilet. The problem is solvable, but it isn't about available facilities, its about being fair to workers and not making using the rest room cost them money, or penalize them in review.
jdsully 5y ago
The US has a good network of public run rest stops on the interstates. The bathrooms aren’t spotless but have always worked in a pinch. There’s one every few hundred miles. Truckers prefer commercial truck stops but I usually see a few at the public ones when I stop there.
- clem 5y ago
  The network of rest stops varies. In Washington State, they recently closed a line of them along the I-5 due to vandalism and a lack of employees to maintain them.
  - coryrc 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

newaccount74 5y ago

I think the best thing about the toilet in the video you linked is that there are cleaning supplies in every room! I don't think there's anything dehumanizing about cleaning up shit and piss. If you've ever cared for children or elderly people you quickly get used to it. But it's hard to clean up a mess with just toilet paper! It's also natural that toilets get a bit dirty. If lots of people use them, they just get dirty, even if everyone is considerate. You don't deep clean toilets after every use. But if there are cleaning supplies available, every toilet user can clean the toilet to their own standards before use! I'd love that!

jasode 5y ago
>I don't think there's anything dehumanizing about cleaning up shit and piss. If you've ever cared for children or elderly people you quickly get used to it. Yes, parents with babies and caring for a bedridden relatives reminds us that human excrement is a natural part of life. But it's not contradictory for those same people to not want their bathroom degrading into dirty public restrooms. Especially when it's caused by strangers who are inconsiderate rather than relatives who are helpless (babies & elderly). Sure, we can all clean up excrement if we have to but the circumstances matter.
- nullstyle 5y ago
  Daycare workers clean up the shit of children not their own. There's nothing degrading about cleaning up shit and piss; The degradation comes when you're doing it for minimum wage as a second job.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Beldin 5y ago
    The degradation might also come from the fact that someone who is capable of steering a truck certainly is capable of wiping his ass and of not leaving an exploded loo behind... but they literally didn't care enough to clean up after themselves. I mean: someone literally shits over your work area, someone who must be able to handle themselves better. Kind of hard not to take that as dehumanising.