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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!

>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.

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.

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.

yep, it definitely comes from that situation as well. No dispute here. Many times the mess will be from an asshole, yeah. But not all times, and when you start making assumptions like that... I was raised to think that you're the asshole.

There will always be the need for some people to clean up after others, and that in and of itself isn't degrading.

I take offense to people who make assumptions that just because you have to empty bedpans then your job is unworthy or degrading. When well compensated that sort of work is just as worthy as the bullshit us dipshits toil at.

I cleaned bathrooms (and buffed floors) for a Michael's hobby store many years ago. It was a morning job, every other day, and was a second job on top of my full-time job. I desperately needed more money, and made the choice to do this to assist with that.

I never felt "degraded" by it. I chose to do it to earn much-needed extra income. I eventually went into construction, and never felt "degraded" when I had to dig foundations, which is essentially ditch digging for a different purpose.

This idea that people have no agency in their life and are perpetually victims is itself dehumanizing and disempowering. I'm grateful that nobody was around me telling me I was a victim of an evil system when I was doing these kinds of jobs while working to get into tech and feeding a new family at the same time. I probably would have listened to them, gotten discouraged, and kicked back and waited for someone else to solve my problems.

I'm glad that you didn't feel degraded by it. You are correct -- work environment is more than just the wage and whether its your primary vocation or not. As a counterpoint to your anecdote, I know several women who felt degraded during their times working as home healthcare aids. In their own words, it motivated them to find better opportunities. They still felt degraded.

I don't know where you're getting all that other nonsense. You're putting a lot of words in my mouth it seems.

>There's nothing degrading about cleaning up shit and piss

That fragment emphasizes the feces and urine but not the circumstances.

>The degradation comes when [...]

Yes, now we do get to the particular circumstances in regards to shit & piss and it turns out that it does matter.

For example, on the Apollo 8 spaceflight, astronaut Frank Borman had diarrhea in space. The turds were floating around in the capsule and landed on the instrument panels: https://www.google.com/search?q=Frank+Borman+diarrhea

It is not dehumanizing nor demeaning for his fellow astronauts to help clean up the poop.

But an inconsiderate truck driver leaving behind a shit explosion on the toilet and floor without cleaning it up is treating the office workers as subhuman. It's a different circumstance.

Similar idea to clearing food and dishes off the tables. That act in isolation is not dehumanizing. E.g. many people clear food off the tables whether it's Thanksgiving dinner or everyday occasion. However, leaving behind a table mess like the following pics show for restaurant workers to clean up after you is treating them as subhuman:

https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/7igpwh/p...

https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/6pxxqj/p...

That moms around the world willingly clean up dinner tables without feeling dehumanized is irrelevant to mistreating restaurant workers like that. And consider that fast food wrappers and half-eaten food is a much lower level of nastiness than feces and urine on the toilet seat and floor.

"But an inconsiderate truck driver leaving behind a shit explosion on the toilet and floor without cleaning it up is treating the office workers as subhuman. It's a different circumstance."

You're putting the blame solely on the truck driver -- perhaps he couldn't afford or was unable to be considerate -- and not the fucked up situation we've built regarding what should be considered a basic human right (easy access to sanitation). Tantrums are bound to happen. Some people smear shit onto walls I'm not saying they're ok. It doesn't change the fact that everyone deserves access to a toilet and clean water, and some of our fellow citizens aren't getting it.

I specifically take issue with the number of bad assumptions you are baking into your argument.

It's degrading for an office worker to clean up someone else's shit, _unless_ that's the job they've signed up for and they're cool with it. I imagine few offices actually pay their facilities staff well enough to deal with shitsmearing, but as I said -- that's where the actual degredation comes from. shit jobs should give stellar pay, but we don't value things like that around here.

>I specifically take issue with the number of bad assumptions you are baking into your argument.

I see your confusion. To clarify, nowhere did I say that workers who deliberately take jobs to clean up human waste (e.g. janitors, daycare workers, etc) are degrading. I made no assumptions like that.

Your other sentence about office workers who are not janitors is the group I'm talking about:

>It's degrading for an office worker to clean up someone else's shit,

100%

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.

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.

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.

There was a certain small population causing that damage, one attracted by non-enforcement of vagrancy, littering, and hard drug laws in Seattle. Same group which has denied us shared public commons.

  > The best way to fund that is to have everyone pay a nominal fee to use the facilities.

IIRC, pay toilets are not a thing in the US (they are not legal in much of the US). And I don't entirely know where I stand on it, personally[0]. On the one hand, allow everyone to charge for toilet usage and you might eventually see bathrooms becoming a profit-center for suffering retail establishments. On the other hand, retail/restaurants (especially in cities) disallow non-customer usage and it's similar in retail (if they're offered at all where its not required by law). I would have zero problem with "pay toilets" that are free standing, separated from retail/restaurants.

Frankly, I don't see any other way it would work in the US -- free public toilets provided by government/government-related entities (like subways/city buses) are universally terrible where I live (either non-existent, non-functional or so nasty as to be non-existent).

I've heard about a system in Germany where local government pays restaurants to allow the public to use their toilets. It's cheaper for the government than erecting public toilets and covers extra cleaning costs for the restaurants.

https://www.die-nette-toilette.de/

>, public toilets in places like highway rest-stops and train stations get 24 hour maintenance.

Yes that's logical. In any case, I was replying to a specific point by the gp (tda) about workplaces denying bathrooms to truckers and why it happens. It isn't just a random act of cruelty but the fact that office workers don't like being abused by some drivers that leave them with a disgusting mess.

The point is that the dehumanization is a 2-way phenomenon. Truckers don't like to be disrespected by the office banning bathroom use. And likewise, the office workers don't like being disrespected by (a minority of) truckers and be forced to clean after them.

In other words, there's an implied social contract of being considerate to others regarding shared bathroom use, and a minority of truckers break that contract. This is what causes the office to deny bathrooms to drivers. Office workers don't want to be unwilling janitors to clean the toilets because of drivers who don't care. Yes, more public bathrooms on highways that are constantly cleaned would lessen this problem.

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.

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.

>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.

How about we put a camera in the stall with some ML and facial recognition? Problem solved if you ask me.

One of the last startups I worked at had 2 bathrooms for roughly 60 people. These were single person bathrooms too. These were reliably in a disgusting, unsanitary state. We all joked about using a restroom at whatever restaurant we chose for lunch.

That sounds like the problem is not enough bathrooms... by OSHA guidelines you should have 4-5 minimum for that # of employees.

that is per sex, so in many cases double that. source: https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/19...

Yeah, it was definitely substandard... Typical "startup" mentality in mgmt. At least we weren't using doors for desks.

"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>

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.

> 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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

> 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?