From buddy Wed May  8 16:49:21 1996
Date: Wed, 8 May 1996 16:02:45
Subject: Women's restrooms


        I'd like to call your attention to the fact that women's restrooms
are too small.  Go to any public place where there's a crowd of people, and
look at  the lines outside the restrooms.  The men's line is always shorter,
and moves about 20 times as fast, if there is a line at all.  Men walk in,
are in there for maybe 20 seconds and then walk out.  Then you look at the
women's room, and the line stretches halfways to Timbuktu.  Women standing
there crossing their legs, croqueting or reading to pass the hours until
they get in there.
        Now, it's easy for a man to go to the restroom most of the time.
After all, nine times out of ten all you have to do is pee, so you walk up
to a urinal, pull that sucker out and go to it.  Shake it off, shove it back
in, zip up, and walk out.  (Men have a saying:  shake it more than three
times and you're playing with it.)
        It's a little different for women.  It isn't as prevalent as it used
to be, but lots of women wear dresses.  So they have to pull that thing down
(making sure not to wrinkle it), sit down, pee, then pull it back up,
rearrange everything, go to the mirror, check their makeup, apply a little
powder or whatever it is they do, talk to a few friends who came in with
them, and then leave.  Total elapsed time:  a minimum of 3 minutes.
        Part of this is because women are handicapped by their anatomy.  Us
guys have this handy little spigot on the front that makes it all easy.  (I
hear protests from some of them:  "Hey, it's not that little!"  Yea, OK.  I
lie, too.)  Women just have the opening, so they can't do the fun stuff like
writing their name in the snow, breaking up cigarette butts, peeing in the
holes in the bottom of urinals, or seeing how far you can push the cake of
deodorant that classier places put in there.
        Another problem:  women's restrooms are apparently social clubs.
Guys, how many times has your wife or girlfriend comes back after her
journey to the john and said, "Guess what I just heard?"  On second thought,
that's not always accurate.  Sometimes they come back after half an hour and
won't tell us anything about what they did in there.  That's because
they're talking about us.
        Men don't talk to each other in the bathroom.  You don't even look
at each other.  Talking and eye contact is threatening, and it's stupid to
threaten someone holding his pride and joy in his hand, because when he gets
it safely put away he's liable to do something damaging to your pride and joy.
        Of course, that's not entirely true, either.  Groaning out an
"Aaahh!" is permissible, or something along the lines of "Hey, how's that
local sports team?" is OK.  Saying how bad you had to go is OK, too.  If
there are significant privacy dividers, or one guy is using one of those
enclosed commodes, you might carry on a conversation for for maybe ten
seconds.  Thirty, tops, because you're not in there long enough to say much.
        Let's look at what's in bathrooms.  Let's say your typical public
restroom for men has two urinals and a toilet.  That sounds about right,
doesn't it?  Even if it isn't, I'm going to use it as an example.  The
corresponding women's restroom will have two, at most three commodes.  I
don't really know, because I haven't been in there, but if they're the same
size as the men's, that's about all there's room for.
       OK, time for a little math.  Typical male bathroom:  two urinals and
a toilet, each in use for 20 seconds.  If there's a guy actually using the
john for something other than taking a leak, it's because he's desperate,
and isn't going home for a while and can't hold it in any longer.  We'll
ignore him, because it's disgusting and also because he doesn't want us to
notice him.  So the restroom can accomodate six men per minute, right?
Well, maybe not.  Some men actually wash their hands or comb their hair.
But they're balanced out because of the other men who come in, squirt for a
second or two and then leave.  Six men per minute is about right.
        Now let's look at the women's restroom.  We'll say it takes about a
minute for women to go into the stall, do their business and get out.  You
see a problem already, don't you?  Already the number is half that of a
men's restroom.  Then we add in the fact that women's clothes are designed
by idiots.  There's always something to tuck, fasten, put tab A in slot B
(you perverts out there can shut up), and so on.  Even the zipper on their
jeans is backwards.  How many of you guys knew that?  If us men had clothes
that complicated we'd say the hell with it and stay home in our underwear
and watch TV all day.
        Then there's women's periods.  On a purely statistical basis, about
a fourth of them are going to have something else to do while they're in
there.  That takes time, too.  Enough on that subject.
        Then we've got the makeup and other rituals.  Us men can't say much
about that, because women won't tell us.  If they do let us in on it, they
censor it so much that we might as well have not asked.  But somehow or
other they manage to kill another minute or two.  But we're getting close to
the point where the number of women a typical restroom can accomodate is
approaching one per minute.
        Based on what we've figured out, we can say that if the restrooms
are the same size, then the men's has a turnover rate of SIX TIMES that of
the women's.  That's a pretty huge difference, don't you think?  So the
women's room should be at least six times as large as the men's.  Maybe
throw in a few couches so the ones who are (still) waiting to use the toilet
can talk to the ones who are on their way out.  Since they're going to be in
there a while, maybe put in some plants for decor, and a stereo with some
romantic music playing.  Better yet, put in a TV tuned to the soap-opera
channel to give them something to talk about besides us.  Of course, now
we've made the restroom so comfortable they'll never want to leave, and
we'll still be stuck outside, waiting for them.
        You can't win.