How is maintaining public restrooms a "massive liability"? Surely its an inconvenience but massive liability seems a bit of a hyperbole.
Or, think about how much someone would have to pay you to do that job.
And, honestly? If more people had to clean toilets in use by other people, maybe we wouldn't have so many folks expecting other people to clean up after them. I see countless posts in my Facebook group about trash on the street. In the time it took to take a photo and post it to social media, they could have picked up the trash and taken it to a nearby bin.
But I suppose that experience goes two ways. Some people think they're above the human condition, to the point where they won't even clean up after themselves, even in their own homes. And other people recognize that it's actually not that hard to clean things up, if you just do it. We all have good and bad days.
Cleaning up bodily fluids, which likely come from drug users, is a whole other thing.
OK, come on, you don’t know that. I doubt we have any serious data that bodily fluids in public bathrooms are likely to come from drug users. And if you’re cleaning it up, presumably you have equipment and are not using your tongue, the residual drugs won’t jump on you. Don’t stigmatise hard drug users, many of them (maybe most) were given a rotten hand early on and now want help. Policies such as Portugal’s decriminalisation have shown we can make a bigger difference when we treat those people as people.
Either way, the point of your parent comment is that most people don’t even pick up trash, which is itself a problem.
There was an immediate 90% reduction in bodily fluids outside the toilet bowl and 100% reduction in stolen plumbing (they were taking part of the p-trap for drug use) and in finding discarded paraphernalia. Correlation isn't causation, maybe all the crack heads were still using the bathroom but decided to be civilized, IDK, but keeping the bathroom under literal lock and key was a big benefit.
It was inconvenient for customers, that was true, and I didn't like that aspect, but it was hard getting staff (or even myself) that had the will to hose poop off a bathroom wall.
Which I can tell from your comment you've never done. "presumably you have equipment" Yeah, a hose. A mop and bucket. You're still in close proximity, you still step in it, it still splashes. And nothing prepares you for the smells. And you can never unsee it. I won't even describe the things I saw in the womens bathroom. Way less common for things to go down in there, but when it did... It's wretched work.
When I was a kid growing up in the 80s/90s, you rarely saw homeless camps like they are now where they openly use drugs. You never saw public restrooms that were completely disgusting. Fast food bathrooms were clean back then.. now they are horrible. Things are not the same... The worst bathrooms back then were at the public parks where they were covered in pee and not cleaned well, but weren't destroyed by drug usage like they are now. I don't remember seeing piles of needles (or even one needle) like you do now.
Because they are underfunded often.
And it's only in the West that public restrooms are that expensive. Japans are less expensive because the locals use them like civilized people and they don't have enormous on-going cleaning and repair costs.
So, the problem isn't in paying the cleaners. It's upstream. No pun intended.
Additionally, not all areas of the country are infested with the “homeless and drug addicts”. People can spin that all they like but areas where people take care of their local services are plentiful.
Lastly, don’t talk to me about prohibitive pricing in government initiates. When we stop spending hundreds of billions bombing other countries, then come talk about things being too expensive.
Nice condescending comment about the homework though, you must have been pleased with that one.
Also, Buc-ees does not offer free bathrooms in urban, dense areas with higher proportions of mentally ill and drug addicted populations, so that comparison makes no sense.
And regarding expense on public bathrooms:
* San Francisco spent $1.7M on a single toilet
* Seattle spend $5 installing 5 toilets.
* NYC's public restrooms routinely cost $2M-$4M
Now, those are building projects rather than ongoing operations. But it shows that governments are willing to spend absurd amounts on toilets.
I don't know exactly what the problem is, but there's something about government (mis)management in the issue.
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2026/08/vandals-set-fires-i...
>The vandalism happened between about 10 p.m. on Aug. 21 and 7 a.m. the following day, according to officials.
But also, the lack of desire to spend money on staffing government restrooms in the first place.
I think you might be giving away the class you were raised in if you think it’s infeasible to pay people to clean toilets.
As for the class I was raised in, my parents worked 24/7, my mom cleaned 20+ bathrooms every day, and my parents, myself and my sister slept in one room until I was 16 years old. I have also worked at places where public restrooms were obliterated, and caused quite a bit of rancor among the staff, resulting in restrictions on who could use them.
But that is neither here nor there on the current supply and demand of people willing to do that job.
Cool.
My point was that I was a minimum wage worker and still cleaning toilets. Did it for minimum wage. There were many other coworkers doing the same.
You said
> Try hiring someone for a job where the job could sometimes be cleaning up bodily fluids and odors in a bathroom. Even the government deems it infeasible.
That's only plausible if you were unwilling to do so yourself and couldn't conceive of anyone else doing the job.
Its literally one of the lowest paid jobs there is.
If you are claiming its infeasible to pay for someone to do that job, you are just saying you dont think that anyone should be paid to do the job.
>Its literally one of the lowest paid jobs there is.
Today, real life says that is not sufficient pay if we want more public bathrooms (in the places lacking them, such as urban, high density areas).
My conclusions are not based on my feelings or opinions, but a simple observations of real life market trends.
Businesses don't spend money to put locks on bathrooms for the fun of it.
But that would cost so much that most municipalities or businesses would not afford that.
Some places, of course, do afford that; they are relatively few, as one might expect. Especially as people become more wealthy and the cost of their work grows.
This might tell us something about the nature of government management or employment.
It doesn’t really bother me. At many of the places I work and volunteer, our norm is to establish a rota, so as not to shove the job onto whoever’s lowest paid, least experienced, or most willing to be bullied into it.
>How is maintaining public restrooms a "massive liability"? Surely its an inconvenience but massive liability seems a bit of a hyperbole.
The labor costs of having a bathroom be cleaned (in certain regions) might very well be cost prohibitive, hence the OP’s linked article. For example, Best Buy has to spend money to keep bathrooms clean, whereas online only vendors don’t. Maybe it can make sense for Best Buy (or smaller operations like coffee shops) to not have a restroom.
Every single employee in a fast food establishment has cleaned toilets, including the horrors you blame on homeless people, like shit smeared on things.
Every single Circle-K employee has cleaned toilets.
The cost for hiring someone to clean toilets is minimum wage.