I am begging you. Via hll!H @ Flickr.
SIT ON THE TOILET. SIT. ON IT. PUT YOUR BUTT ON THE TOILET SEAT.
I work at a public college, and the bathroom nearest my office is cleaned four times a day. Four times. Sit on the toilet.
Even if your workplace doesn’t clean the restrooms four times a day, I bet you have custodial services in there either before or after work, once a day, minimum. Sit on the toilet.
Unless you have oozing, suppurating, open wounds on the backs of your thighs, it is safe to sit your bare-naked-self on a public toilet seat. Sit on the toilet.
You cannot get STDs from a toilet seat. Sit on the toilet.
Your skin is a flexible, water-proof, germ-resistant barrier. You probably bathe regularly, too, so that anything that shouldn’t be there will be washed off in short order. Sit on the toilet.
Urine is sterile. Sit on the toilet.
If you sit on the toilet, whatever comes out of you will land IN the toilet, not on the toilet. Sit on the toilet.
If you are so squeamish that the thought your bare bum might touch porcelain that has touched another bare bum makes you pee-shy, put down some TP, and then? Sit on the toilet.
You will find far more germs on your hands, your telephone, your computer keyboard than you will on a public toilet seat. Sit on the toilet.
Please, please, please, my sisters, do your part for womanity and Sit. On. The Toilet.
And for maude’s sake, wash your hands!
THANK YOU!!!!! I do NOT understand women who insist on hovering an inch over the toilet seat. Honestly, the backs of your thighs is not your vagina. jesus christ!
sorry to be so ranty, its a pet peeve.
wow I was sure this was going to be a rant imploring men to sit when they peed, thereby igniting one of the most deeply felt backlashes known to mankind.
thank you for supporting my lifetime practice of being too lazy to squat even in fairly squalid conditions.
JD: I thought that (rant about men peeing sitting down)too at first. I was like, I’m listening…
Heh. Good stuff. I always sit on the toilet, unless it’s a port-o-potty that’s absolutely filthy. People assess risk in really fucked up ways. People who drive to and from work every day act like I have a death wish for sky-diving. And people who don’t think twice about touching subway turnstyles won’t sit on the toilet! It’s nonsensical.
Sit on the toilet, but for dog’s sake, DO NOT TALK ON YOUR CELL PHONE while sitting on said toilet in a public bathroom! WTF is wrong with you?!
Ahem, sorry. That was directed at the Chatty Cathys who regular carry on phone conversations while I’m taking a piss in the next stall.
Thank you!!
Or, sit on the tops of your pants. On the toilet. And please check behind you, in case you left a drop of pee on the seat because you were standing up as you wiped. (I do this now and then.) And! If it’s a self-flushing toilet, please check to make sure it flushes itself and manually flush if necessary. The custodian’s job isn’t to flush for you.
@SarahMC: Oh God, portapotties are awful. AWFUL. I attended a big outdoor concert awhile back and stood in line for 30 minutes to use a portajohn, only to wind up in line behind two drunk girls who barely made it inside the john before puking. Oh God. It was awful. I vowed never again to attend any event at which portajohns were the only bathroom option. I’m just too old for that sh*t (pun intended).
I always sit on the toilet seat unless there’s a splash of urine on it. I know urine is sterile and my skin is a perfectly good barrier, but dude, that’s someone else’s urine and I do not need any part of my body to make contact with it.
Of course, if bitches would just sit on the seat, there wouldn’t be splashes of urine there to begin with, so yeah, SIT ON THE SEAT.
hahaahaha. This is possibly my favourite ever post on this site. It’s genius. I have never ever understood why people can’t sit on toilet seats, well you know unless they’re in a particularly vile condition but this generally is rare and involves portaloos as mentioned.
I don’t mind the germs, it is the cold that bothers me. Toilet seats at stadiums for example are often so cold that I can’t bear to put my butt down on them. I’m a good squatter though and have the good sense to wipe off the toilet seat when I’m finished.
My office shares a bathroom with two other offices, and those women like to try to flush papertowels, pee on the seat and not check to see that they’ve flushed adequately. I cannot sit on the seat. I am convinced there are germ vapors that will invade my ladyparts or get in my eyes or something. I…I just can’t do it. Being raised by a mom and grandmother who routinely carry their own seat covers might have something to do with it.
But the cell phone thing has to stop. Has. To. Stop.
Kivrin, I was celebrating St. Patrick’s Day all day Saturday back in my hometown, so I spent way more time standing in line for the port-o-potties than I would have liked. And of course one of the ladies I was with was belligerently drunk, picked fights with the women in front of us numerous times, and made me accompany her into the john to pee (during which time the assholes outside kicked the john repeatedly).
Gaaah, there was this lady from a neighbor lab that left all sorts of bodily fluids in the toilet seat!
So it’s TP on the seat for me. Same lady spits globs into the sink.
Thankfully she changed buildings a while ago.
Funniest. Post. Ever!!!
My mother is a germaphobe freak who takes her own toilet seat with her on cruises and almost asphyxiated my sister by cleaning the bathroom in their cabin with a half gallon of bleach.
I may have to send her this link via an anonymous remailer.
@hillrat: What is this anonymous remailer you speak of? One could get a lot of use out of such a thing.
@Becky: I tend to just get some toilet paper and wipe it off.
I also admit that I’ve gotten into a stall, seen splashes all over it, silently fumed, wiped off the seat, done my business, then flushed only to find that the flushing mechanism is so unreasonably strong it flings urine-water all over the seat. I then realize I shouldn’t have been so upset with whoever used the stall before me.
For this I blame automatic flushing toilets, which I hate with the fire of a thousand suns. They require you to finish urinating in a very short amount of time and then will sometimes flush while you are still sitting on the toilet. It’s so unpleasant. Please tell me I’m not the only one who’s had this experience? Or am I just unlucky with toilets?
Until I become a contortionist who can eat off of the backs of her thighs, I’m on board with this. I have been known to do a wipedown first or the TP cover though, depending on the situation.
@BeckySharper
Just google “anonymous remailer” and you should get all the information you need. -HR
Kithkin, I haaaate that restrooms are completely automated these days! But nothing is efficient, just so frustrating I’d rather piss my pants.
The only case where I feel the need to use a seat cover (or wipe down with TP) is the gym bathroom. And it’s not a fear of germy butts but wet, post-lappool butts and elliptical sweaty butts.
But that’s just cause other people’s sweat grosses me out. … and who wants a wet ‘seat’?
And I am totally on the ‘no cell phone conversations in the bathroom’ train. That is annoying. And rude (you wanna talk to someone and suddenly hear a flush on the other end? I know I don’t).
@hillrat: [as Montgomery Burns] Eeeeeexcellent. Thanks!
@BeckySharper
Glad to be of service. It’s also good to know that Simpson’s jokes are in play here at Harpyness.
I am so tempted to print this out and post it in restrooms all over town…
Kithkin – I am somehow totally invisible to automatic toilet flushers. I either stand there staring at them until giving in and pushing the button myself or they flush while I’m still sitting down.
I do love the automatic seat covers they have at the casino – you just wave your hand and get new plastic so you don’t have to mess with laying down the TP. Although sometimes I suspect the machine is just re-using the same plastic over and over.
We totally had this problem at work last year. It’s bad enough to have squat pee-ers, but these ones had really bad aim. I won’t go into the details, but my office-mate made up some ‘no squat peeing’ signs with a cartoon of someone squatting over a toilet and a big old line through it. She sent them to the EH+S person as a joke, but the next thing we knew the signs had been posted in the bathroom.
Now we just have the woman who covers the seat with 100 layers of toilet paper and then clogs the toilet with it. Sigh.
Amen sista. Wish I could get this through my stepmom’s head, but then again she still calls it the “little girls’ room” so there’s not much hope.
My bathroom gets cleaned multiple times per day. I’m pretty sure my work toilet is cleaner than my home toilet, loathe as I am to clean our bathroom (it’s pretty much become Mr. FF’s default chore).
That said, we had some work bathroom excitement today. One of the profs found one of the housekeeping staff nearly unconscious in the floor of the bathroom, apparently having a panic attack or some sort of cardiac episode. I arrived at the office to see two ambulances, one fire truck, and one police car. Apparently the lady is OK and didn’t have to be taken to the hospital, but yikes!
@Blondegrlz: They have those at O’Hare airport, too! They really freak me out–it’s almost better to just go while you’re on the plane. Almost. They say that the plastic is destroyed and never reused, but people say a lot of things.
My mom is such a downer: when I told her about the O’Hare toilets, she tells me it’s because companies are preparing for the future of supergerms and biological warfare. That’s why everything needs to be hands-free. She subscribes to no other conspiracy/doomsday theories, by the way, aside from reading the occasional scifi paperback. /sigh
I was a bartender and bouncer in a nightclub for ages, and it used to drive us all crazy when the “hoverers” would use the bathroom, and they NEVER wipe up after themselves.
Yeah, nightclub staff HATE those people.
FreshPeaches (and everyone else), you have my blessing to post this in every restroom you visit everywhere.
MKP: Honey, baby. Sit. Pleeze.
can I get support for the “buffer zone” too??? if the whole bathroom is empty except for me, don’t go in the stall right next to me and fart! one stall buffer unless the place is full plz!!
This blog is quickly becoming my go to place for the laugh of the day…Literally tears rolling down my cheeks from laughing. Yes what you say is so true and I shall try to repent from the error of my ways.
I don’t really get the pee-hoverers to begin with — if you see something gross, use a different toilet or clear it up. If you don’t see something gross, sit, for heaven’s sake!
But what I REALLY don’t get is the people who leave gross stuff behind to begin with. Urine, splatters of blood, pubic hairs– why?? You have to turn to face the toilet to flush it (or to observe that it’s automatically flushing)– how can you not see whatever it is you’ve left behind? And if you see it, ok, it’s a little gross to clean up. But way less gross for you to deal with your own mess than for the next person to do it for you!
Thank you, PhD. Yes! a million times over.
In my old job, someone left this sign on the bathroom mirror for all to see:
If you sprinkle
When you tinkle
Please be neat
And wipe the seat!
It depressed me that grown women needed to be reminded of this.
We have assgasket dispensers at work, but a few years back, we had a serial seat-pisser who apparently did not understand their function. Someone put the sprinkle/tinkle poem up in the stall where they perpetrated this atrocity every afternoon, without any change. So I made my own sign, pointing to the assgasket dispenser that stated simply:
DON’T HOVER;
USE A COVER
They heeded the advice, but would leave the used assgasket on the seat. So I added to the verse:
THEN EVEN IF YOU’RE IN A RUSH,
PUSH IT IN BEFORE YOU FLUSH!
They got the message.
I always sat on the toilet. ALWAYS! Until a friend of mine mentioned that her doctor had once casually suggested that the rash on her butt was
HERPES she had gotten from a TOILET SEAT! In fact her rash was impetigo, but the fact that the doctor even suggested it was possible for her to contract herpes from a toilet seat has since scared me into hovering, then wiping. I realize that 99.99% of all doctors agree that the idea of getting herpes from the toilet is absolutely retarded and that it’s irrational for me to worry about it.
Still. Every time I go to sit on the seat, the phrase BUTT HERPES echoes through my mind. And then I hover.
Also: I once got into a fight with a lady in Barnes & Noble because she was having a cell phone conversation while peeing in the restroom. How can people think this is OK?
Trase, I salute you for your elegant and effective restroom poetry on behalf of The Cause. Gold star!
AuntieEm, The Pursuit of Harpyness is in full support of the Buffer Stall Policy.
have.at.it, I am appalled by the doctor’s behavior. That “butt herpes” should be anything other than a joke-affliction to wish on Rush Limbaugh is terribly sad.
if people are that worried about the toilet seat, then paper it up or something.
it’s actually worse for you to hover than it is for you to just sit.
furthermore, those who hover spray, and y’all never clean that spray up. EVER. so just sit the f*ck down.
I do hover sometimes but I put the toilet seat up so the people after me don’t have to sit in my pee. I make an effort to pee slowly (I guess I have good muscle control) so I don’t splash.
Also, even if I lift the seat and don’t make a mess, I still wipe the seat if there’s pee on it so the person who uses the bathroom after me doesn’t think that I did it!
The grossest thing in the world, to me, is the blood on the underside of the toilet that comes from women letting their underwear and pads touch the toilet when they pee. Seriously, that is the nastiest thing EVER.
I recently saw a bloody pad STUCK TO THE SIDE OF THE STALL in the library at my university. for christ’s sake, women, let’s use the bathroom nicely.
I can’t even begin to comment on proudly displayed pads, except for two words, which I have said time and again (and will continue to say): Diva. Cup.
THANK YOU. This is one of those things that makes me want to cut a bitch on a regular basis. I’m sorry, but I just think hovering to pee is a sign of low intelligence.
I work with a woman who uses those paper seat covers and leaves them on the toilet seat when she’s finished. It drives me batshit.
I mean, really? The paper prevents her butt cheeks from being sullied, but I have to move it? Fuck that.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Really, I’m beyond sick and tired of really having to pee but being unable to unless I want to clear up the spray from the woman that visited that potty before me.
I’ve just found it’s 10x easier to piss standing up. Even in pants (it is actually doable
)
These are things you take for granted having a toilet seat to sit on when you move from the US to live in an Eurasian country. Here there are no toilet seats to be found, they remove them and therefore standing up and hovering is the only option for all uses of the bathroom. Yes it was difficult to adapt since I prefer sitting with lots of TP to cover the seat but what can you do? The other common type of toilet is a ceramic hole in the floor, where you have to strategically place yourself to go to the bathroom, it’s a struggle with pants, but eventually you learn to use it in the same way as a normal toilet you back into it. It’s also very common in Japan’s public toilets at least 8 years ago when I was there.
THANK YOU!!! WHY do some women think it is more hygienic to spray a seat with their pee and then leave it for the next person? Not to mention just being totally rude and selfish? I always TP wipe every seat before I go, because I want to SIT DOWN.
[...] PhDork at the Pursuit of Harpyness is begging you women to sit on the toilet. I would add that if you can’t bring yourself to sit, please, PLEASE clean up after yourself. That includes the pee drops and/or stupid toilet paper you left all over the seat. [...]
A dry toilet seat is sterile. Wipe the seat with a piece of TP and sit down in perfect safety.