TO GO OR NOT TO GO? WHERE, IS THE QUESTION

For a long time, there has been no question. Public toilet facilities have been identified by signage as either "men" or "women", based upon physicality. However, more recently, culture and laws have dictated a more complicated scenario. Facilities now are to be identified on a gender neutral basis. For example, appropriate signage can be "restroom", "bathroom", "washroom" and the like. Choices can be complicated. For example, one does not go to a public restroom to rest, to a bathroom to bathe or to a washroom merely to wash. More importantly, one does not know who one might meet in such a room, making secure door locks a must.

One is reminded of far earlier times when toilet facilities were called out houses, for good reason, as they usually were little wooden shacks located some distance from living quarters to as to assure uncomfortable winter weather walks in the middle of the night. Our family cottage had such an outhouse, a two hole one. I often wondered why it had two holes, side by side, as I did not find usage to foster potential moments of togetherness.

Sometimes the availability of a facility or a choice is not apparent at all when a need arises. Consider the following case.* A customer came to a grocery store to buy feed. While there, he expressed a desire to urinate and asked to use the store's toilet. The store had no toilet. He was told to go into the back room to the dark corner behind the hay, "that was the place used for such purposes." The room had no light. In entering the room, he fell into an open freight elevator pit. While on his hands and knees in the pit, an employee of the store lowered the freight elevator onto him. It was unclear if he was able to urinate under such circumstances.

The court affirmed judgment for the customer, finding negligence by the store to its invitee. However, on a motion for rehearing, the appeals court changed its mind, finding that there was no invitation to the customer to use any part of the feed compartment as a place to urinate.

The conclusion, perhaps, is that finding an appropriate toilet facility is much like looking for a needle in a haystack.

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*M.N. Bleich & Co. v. Emmett, 295 S.W. 223
(Tex. C.C.A. 1927)

© Daniel J. Kucera 2020