In a Rome airport

[indigo_rose99]

Women's bathroom.  Three filled stalls, one empty stall, a line of three women in front of me.  I try to peer in the empty stall, but am afraid of losing my place in line and it is a bad angle.  The line empties, and a stall opens for the person in front of me.  As she steps into it, I take a solid look in the empty stall.  It looks fine.  The woman in front of me backs out of her stall in horror, "There is no seat!" 

I shrug fatalistically.  This seems typical of Greece, Italy and Spain to me.  I wonder where she peed on HER trip.  I point to the empty stall, "It has a seat."

"But they said the lock doesn't work!"  She walks in it anyway.  I take the no-seat one.

She would prefer a stall with no lock to one with no seat?

As I opened my stall door to leave, a man casually walking in the restroom.  Evidently male janitors in Rome enter women's restrooms any time they please.  I will stand by my no-seat choice.

Afternote: Evidently the male janitors clean all five bathrooms in the terminal simultaneously.  No kidding.  All five (both genders) blocked off for cleaning at the same time.  No evidence of actual cleaning, though one janitor stood outside the closed-for-cleaning tape and glared at us.  Our theory (this would be the growing pack of angry women, all of whom had attempted to enter between one and three closed bathrooms) is that closed bathrooms require less cleaning.  Hey, less work!

Comments

[sclatter.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd choose seat over lock. :-)