Comments

1

It is a shame that the precious hands of women should be soiled by having to do such an undignified activity of moving a toilet seat, or other basic human activities. Clearly, they are far too fragile and dainty for such work.

2

I'm so glad you're getting this out of your system Katie. I trust this will be the last post in this series, or can we expect a nuanced follow-up?

3

All men are filthy degenerate creatures who's procreative function will be rendered extraneous in due time. Until then given the two scenarios: (a) lifting the seat prior to their foul process of urination and subsequently leaving it in the upward modality, or (2) just leaving it down during the entire process so that the seat while left in the downward modality is nonetheless defouled with urine traces thereupon; which of these two would be preferable? ...and no, statistically there is no third option, (men being the filthy degenerate selfish vile...etc that they are)

4

The men should be pissing in the sink for Christ's sake. Bunch of barbarians over there.

5

Yes, put the seat down.
(Every time you put the seat down, a Trump voter loses his or her shit!)

6

I--avec penis--pee seated. Excellent results by any metric.

7

The White House just released their 2020 budget proposal, and it proposes slashing climate science funding, Medicare/Medicaid funding, education funding, and generally being monstrous to everyone that isn't a six-figure donor to the RNC, but yeah, this is definitely the burning topic of our day.

8

A link, for those interested (I've wished for that Edit button more this week than I have in the last year):

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/11/us/politics/trump-budget.html

9

I love these little OfficeSpats(LT) posts. They're a veil removed. The most memorable was West-and-Savages Hello I Am Fat series, but this one might be a good second. I'm enjoying it. Please continue.
[pops a bag of popcorn and settles in]

10

No way, Lester. You should keep doing "you"!
Fuck the Matriarchy!

11

Auto-da-fé?
What's an auto-da-fé?
It's what you oughtn't to do...
..but you do anyway!

Burn him! Burn him at the stake!

Or make him pee sitting down for the rest of his life.
Tis a cleaner way after all...

12

There was a time The Stranger would've mercilessly skewered any publication that entertained these sort of worn-out mindless page-fillers. My. How far The Stranger has fallen.

13

There is a flaw in your utilitarian reasoning. In this instance, maximizing utility is equivalent to minimizing the number of toilet seat touches. If we follow your procedure (lowering the seat after every standing urination) then the number of seat touches per standing pee is 2 (raise and lower). If we follow Lester's procedure, then the number of seat touches per standing pee is 2*(ln(1-p))*(p-1)/p, where p is the rate of the toilet is used for standing urination.

2*(ln(1-p))*(p-1)/p is less then 2 (for p between 0 and 1), which can intuitively be understood by noticing that if a standing urniator uses the toilet after another standing urinator they are saved from touching the seat at all. As a result, Lester's rule will have lower seat touches and thus a higher utility. Utilitarianism is often criticized for being unjust.

14

If that picture is the toilet.in question, you're all wrong. There is a lid attached to that commode pictured,so everyone, standers and sitters alike, should be putting the lid down when they've finished their business. Just lift what you need to when you need to evacuate and then close the whole dam thing when you're done.

15

$20. Problem solved. https://www.amazon.com/FLIPPER-Reliable-Inexpensive-Toilet-Lifter/dp/B0052SVSQ0

16

Lester can fuck up a wet dream.

17

This is my favorite thing in the Stranger since Rob McKenna wrote about strawberry jam for breakfast.

18

I don't see any bidet attachment on the toilet in the picture, so that leads me to believe that "the Stranger" staff are a bunch of filthy savages walking around with dirty anuses, rendering the entire seat position argument moot.

19

What @13 said! When I read "As a utilitarian, I support policies designed to bring the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people," my first thought was "Is she high?", second thought, "she may have a future in the Trump White House" (since as we all know "greatest number" == "a few really rich people") third thought was what 14 said. But then @14 came up with the ideal solution, them men must lower the lid, then everybody will have to touch some part of the seat assembly. Now IF the men can all commit to that, it will be interesting to see how often the toilet is left with the seat down but the lid up.
A better option if the Stranger wasn't so cheap would be a proper restroom with a urinal and perhaps an ADA toilet (in addition to the lack of grab bars that toilet in the picture is way to close to the wall for any bath room)
Another, cheaper option might be to get a "soft close" toilet seat so that, if left up, it can be closed with a just a touch on the top of the lid rather firmly grabbing the germy seat ring.

20

oops, that should have been two @13s and one @14
BTW, even though I don't live with any other humans, and I do have a penis, I always put the lid down (so my cats don't fall in)

22

Stop bitching about it and do something about it.
Hot-glue the seat down.
Problem solved.

23

I realize this is probably controversial, but I have a thought: everybody clean up after themselves after using the restroom. Don't leave dribbles, don't leave shit smears, don't leave anything left in the bowl or on the seat. Then it won't matter if the seat is up or down, and it's more civilized for everyone.

25

If it's down and I need it up, I put it up.

If it's up and I need it down, I put it down.

Neither circumstance causes any harm to my psyche.

27

I work with a guy who will come into the bathroom and kick the seat up, do his pee-pee thing, and then kick the flusher (if he uses a urinal, he doesn’t flush, presumably because he can’t do high kicks). Then he leaves without washing his hands.

OTOH, I hear from women who tell me that the ladies rooms at work are a Christian disgrace.

28

Everyone gets their own chamber pot. Problem solved.

29

Plus you know, a whole office of male reporters that call men out publicly for being peices of shit should be able to call each other for their shitty washroom habits. Lester’s whole argument was the stranger male staff are horrible people when it comes to peeing so he’d rather optimize for the men than do the work to call out their shitty washroom culture.

30

What about tearing off a sheet or two of toilet paper and using that as a way to avoid touching the seat/lid? Is that too awful to contemplate?

31

Why is the default a down toilet seat and who decided that? I'm a woman who grew up with two brothers and am married to a man and so I sometimes have to lower the toilet seat. My husband occasionally has to lift up the toilet set. We're both lifting. We're both fine.

32

@31: The people who decided that were the designers of toilets in private homes. Why do you think they provided them with a lid? It's not so you'd have a more comfortable place to sit down when you're not using the toilet for its main purpose, or to have a place to put your laptop so you can listen to podcasts while you're in the shower. It's so you can CLOSE the toilet before flushing it because — as others have pointed out here — when you flush, a fine mist infused with urine and fecal matter is released. When the toilet is closed, that grossness is mostly (though not entirely) contained.

You may be fine. But if you make a habit of leaving the toilet open when you flush, your bathrooms are not.

33

@32, your hypothesis fell into anachronism. Toilet seats have had lids for decades, but remember how recent the study was that demonstrated the fecal bacteria plume from flushing?

34

@34 "decades"? Thomas Crapper, who popularized the modern flush toilet in the late 19th century, outfitted his with lids. Back then, the engineering was primitive enough that I doubt it took a scientific study to detect microscopic unsanitary mist; it would have been more like, "I've mostly fixed the splashing-out-of-the-bowl problem, but it's still going to need a cover that you can close when you flush it."


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