11 June 2011

The Potty Post

Strange things make me wonder. When I last flew several years ago, it seemed that all the old folks in wheelchairs and walkers and the whole shebang were loaded up first. It took them over 10 minutes to load six people and I wondered if there were a fire, would anybody make it out? I'm hardly a "survival of the fittest" kind of person, but I question the wisdom of allowing so many physically handicapped people to use a plane at once if there aren't good ways to get them in and out of the plane QUICKLY. It's a safety issue. (I'm not saying no handicapped people should fly. Just maybe not so many on one flight! Or have a few rows without standard seats in which you bolt the chairs to the floor like they do on the handicap busses, and wider aisles so you can just scoot these folks out fast! Just askin' for some common sense.)

Now I'm wondering how they would EVER be able to use the potty. The wheelchair doesn't even go up the aisles, so people who can't take a few steps can't get on the plane in the first place unless someone carries them. I guess people in wheelchairs don't have families to travel to and never need to use the restroom. Well, good for them! :)

No, seriously, planes are an extreme example, but almost no business has accessable anything. Try clothes shopping sometime at a department store. Could you imagine getting between the clothes racks and looking around? Even stores built within the last few years allow for practically zero room between the racks. Aisles that are carefully constructed to allow wheelchairs to go through are clogged with rolling sales racks. And the bathroom, you have to open a really heavy door to get in WHILE you are going round a corner. Imagine yourself unable to move from the waist down and sitting in a chair. You can't open the door and get in, can you?

I don't know that I agree with forcing businesses to make things "handicap accessible" and spending zoodles of dollars, especially if it does no blinking good for people who really need the chair to get around. By the way, I weigh something like 468 pounds (well, maybe 458 but am using the upper end of my weight to make a point) and I cannot get into the stall, turn and shut the door. I have to use the handicap stall or I won't be able to fit without getting toilet water on my hiney when I stand up. By the way, automatic flushers are JUST WRONG! You can't stand and get away in time without getting splashed in the small stalls! And too bad for you if you don't like seeing me hold my skirts around my stomach when I exit; I am not letting my skirts touch the potty, so I will hold them next to my body until I clear the stall AND the splash area. Man. Who needs Sea World when I can get splashed every day at Wal-Mart for free? Eew.

As noted in the previous paragraph, I am fat. Deal with it or I will squash you. But I must say it is absolutely WRONG of some of these folks to use the Wal-Mart automated chairs IN the restroom! If you're that stinkin' handicapped, you should have a chair of your own that doesn't take up six feet by three feet. Wal-Mart (God bless 'em) is providing those chairs as a COURTESY because their store is so large, and they know some people get tired of walking all that way. Please have the COURTESY not to take them into the restroom and run over the toddlers there. It's 20 steps. You took at least that getting into the building before plunking your fat self on the chair. Courtesy, people.

I dunno. I think we can ask for some courtesy in the design of these businesses, too. Does anybody actually use the tiny stalls if there isn't a line and a real need to go?

8 comments:

  1. Agreed!!! Keep the motorized carts OUT of the bathrooms, they are small enough without those in the way. Another thing that bugs me is when people try to take their shopping carts into bathrooms...do you really think someone is going to pilfer your unpurchesed items if you leave the cart outside the bathroom?? You're in a STORE, there are thousands of cartons of eggs, and hundreds of gallons of milk...yours isn't the ONLY one.

    Reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where George gets caught taking a book in the bathroom and the book is 'flagged' as a bathroom book by staff. He is horrified. lol Well, who would take their food into a public restroom, then take it home and put it in the fridge???

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  2. Lol AHHH, but um...

    How do I put this? Do you know how many people I've seen leave the bathroom without washing their hands? Even after obviously POOPING?? And then they touch the groceries, but don't buy everything they touch??

    The groceries don't bug me nearly so much as the running over kid thing. You can leave the shopping cart where it won't get splashed... it's kind of like reading a book in the bathroom, sorta yucky to put it back on the coffee table... but...

    Hm. I wish I had a handy poll in the sidebar. Groceries in the bathroom, gross? yes or no.

    :P

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  3. I remember that Seinfeld episode! Was funny. lol

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  4. Can't offer any thoughts on the plane issue, but in shopping centres I will often use the handicapped toilet, not because I'm too fat for the regular stalls, (I weigh about 154 pounds), but because I don't drive so take my little "granny" trolley to the shops with me to wheel my groceries home in. This doesn't fit into a regular toilet stall and there's just no way I'm leaving it outside for anyone to walk off with, so into the handicapped stall I go.

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  5. P.S. here in Australia, the toilets are not within the store itself, but situated somewhere else within the shopping centre. A trolley of groceries left outside one of those would be gone in a heartbeat! Also my groceries are in zipped up bags well away from the toilet itself, close to the washbasin so well out of splash range. Mostly I try not to take groceries in, if I think I can make it home, if there's some urgency, then I have no choice.

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  6. Interesting... but makes sense. Then the big stores aren't left to deal with all the cleaning issues... here the bathrooms only are in larger stores, which makes no sense.

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  7. My thought is that they are worried that someone will steal their motorized chair while they are in the restroom if they leave it outside--just like an empty shopping cart will get taken if unwatched.

    Lynne Diligent

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  8. I have handicapped stall guilt. I am overweight too, wearing about a size 22. I feel claustrophobic in a regular stall, so unless there is a handicapped person around, I head right to the handicapped stall, but sometimes I feel like I shouldn't be using it.

    Regarding the carts... if it is parked outside of the bathroom with a few items in it... and maybe a note... no one will touch it for the few minutes it takes you to potty.

    I don't have a toddler anymore, but I have attacked people pretty viciously for almost hurting or even offending my kids.

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Non-troll comments always welcome! :)

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