You know outside of the US most countries bathrooms stalls actually work / fit / don’t have peekaboo gaps?
In a lot of public stalls in Japan, the outer end of the door is rounded. And the wall it connects to when closed is concaved. So even though there’s a gap to allow the door to open and close freely, there no direct line of sight.
That sounds like it would cost 5¢ more to manufacture and install. Won’t someone think of the shareholders?
Yes, and we’re incredibly envious of it every time it comes up :(
Al I thought this was a reference to the Greenland MP (I think?) I heard on NPR this morning. He was asked if he thinks the US Government is fascist and he said “if you see a piece of wood with hinges on it, you start to ask if its a door” or something like that
US moment
America? America.
The rest of the world somehow manages to make doors the size of the frame that go pretty much to the floor.
In America, the reason is basically “religion”. There are architectural standards which designers refer to for guidance, and the dude who did the architectural standard for restrooms was super hardcore religious. His standard called for big gaps in all the seams, to prevent people from masturbating in the stalls. Basically, he wanted people to be able to peek into stalls, as a sort of modesty check. And eventually, it just became accepted as normal, even though everyone (including Americans who were born and raised with them as the standard) hates the huge gaps.
In modern day, they’re mostly done to deter drug use. I guess the reasoning is similar, with the large gaps intended to allow people to peek into the stalls and see if someone is doing drugs.
If the goal is to allow observation, what’s the point in having doors and cubicles at all?
For what it’s worth regardless of how it started, it’s now enforced by ADA as an accessibility compliance issue, so that a wheelchair users feet can get under the stall door so they can get close enough to reach the latch. Seems like a stretch to me but I’m not a wheelchair user
Sure that explains the bottom gap, but the side gaps are the issue. I’ve never made eye contact with a grown man that’s crawled under my stall. I have made eye contact with someone walking by the stall door through the door crack.
Just the USA, not all of America
That’s false.
I travel a lot for my job, maybe fifty different countries the past 5 or 6 years, and I’ve never seen toilet doors as silly and poorly-designed as US ones, except in places where they’re just making do with what they have.
I didn’t travel as much as you (far from it)
But in every contry I’ve ever been there were toilet doors reaching the ground and floating ~20cm over it in about equal amounts
Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, France, South Korea, Japan were all essentially private booths. Should be standard.
UK was a bit of a cluster, Philippines had doors sometimes, Italy was almost like America at least around Florence when I was there 20 years ago
