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Comment by georgyo | Hacker News Reader

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georgyo·

The bathroom connects two rooms where you don't know or trust the other room.

Without a lock you have no way to prevent them coming into your room when you are not there.

Still that is some great out of the box thinking.

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That thought occurred to me, too, but I realized that you could add locks that could only be locked from the bedroom sides.

Yes, but then the problem becomes possibly being locked out of your own bedroom, stuck in the shared bathroom!

How? If someone from your room on purpose locks you in the shared bathroom? That doesn’t sound like a likely scenario

I lived in on-campus student housing that had bathrooms like this (the locks on both sides of both doors version.) My friend was in the bathroom during a commercial break of X-Files and I locked him in there. Ha ha. So he knocked on my neighbour's door and got out that way, but he still needed to get back into my room from the public hallway. I was watching him through the peep hole in my door, and to taunt him I opened the door and quickly closed it again. The two problems with that were that the peep hole made it look like he was further away than he was and the door had a hydraulic arm on it and didn't close as quickly as I expected. Anyway, I put ice on my forehead for the rest of the episode and then went to the hospital for three stitches.

I'd say that the likeliness really depends on whose bathroom it is. ;)

May not be likely but does seem like this would be in violation of fire codes. (Possible lack of free egress)

That could always happen regardless of the locking mechanism.

The solution still allows you to lock your own room from bathroom entry (though it isn’t this way, weirdly, at the hotel in question).

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