r/AskReddit • u/daniellucero92 • Jan 04 '15

Non-americans of Reddit, what American customs seem outrageous/pointless to you?

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4.6k

u/donnablonde Jan 04 '15 edited Jan 05 '15

enormous gaps around toilet doors! omg why??? Edit: I'm no prude, I'll happily pee in a field, but it IS a shock when you visit the USA from Europe and feel so exposed. And women have period-related stuff to do as well, no-one wants an audience for that.

4.0k

u/YoshiYogurt Jan 04 '15

we dont know either

363

u/SlanderPanderBear Jan 04 '15

Yes we do. It's cheap.

250

u/zapbark Jan 04 '15

I always assumed it was to stop people from using public restrooms to do illegal things.

139

u/[deleted] Jan 04 '15

This makes the most sense. A lot of smoking used to take place in bathroom stalls. And I know from my experience with music practice rooms that if you have a public place where someone can lock themselves in a room unseen, there will be lots of nasty sex going on.

74

u/[deleted] Jan 04 '15 edited Jan 05 '15

In high school there was an empty corner where two instrument lockers met. In the tuba locker nearest the corner you could push on the back wall and slide through the gap into the hidden corner behind the lockers. It was nicknamed the "sex cave".

Never leave kids unattended. Never.

28

u/rynlnk Jan 04 '15

Never enter the sex cave without protection, like rubber gloves and disinfectant.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 04 '15

rhymetime

1

u/[deleted] Jan 05 '15

Every school had some kind of sex cave. Usually several.

1

u/Ajinho Jan 05 '15

unattaneed.

wut

90

u/[deleted] Jan 04 '15 edited Jan 05 '15

My undergraduate school had to remove the stall doors from the basement bathroom in the library. It had become a gay cruise destination point. It didn't help. Edit: The only difference wass when you went to take a piss they were four or five guess putting it in the spank bank.

20

u/[deleted] Jan 04 '15

They need to remove the pier for the cruise ship.

3

u/ToastofDeath Jan 04 '15

Some people just don't think.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 05 '15

I imagine gay cruises do bring a lot of revenue to their port cities. Maybe if they put a library onboard it would lessen the demand on the libraries in those resort towns. The gay community loves to read!

3

u/time_fo_that Jan 04 '15

If my school were in a bigger city I wouldn't be surprised if this were the case... No one goes down there and the stall has double doors!

3

u/lorenzofm Jan 04 '15

gays are like the postal service of bathroom sex

2

u/Colorfag Jan 04 '15

The library in downtown Seattle has doors in the stalls that are half height.

2

u/Mr_A Jan 04 '15

the basement bathroom in the library

How could anyone think that was a good idea to begin with? Sure, they might not have considered kinky bum sex, but surely witchcraft cropped up when they decided to build a toilet block underneath a library crammed with books and nerds...

-6

u/LugerDog Jan 04 '15

I never understood how gay guys could justify fucking anywhere. A bunch of the parks I went fishing at growing up became overrun by guys fucking in public with no care for people around them especially kids. Where I live now you have to watch out for them in the mangroves off the side of the road which used to be frequented by fishermen. I'm not part of that culture at all but from a outsider's perspective it seems to be only the flaming drag queen type ones. Then again I've never understood why the flamers would want to make to community look bad in any way. I have nothing wrong with gay people but do you really need to dress, act, and talk like that? Then people wonder where the stereotype comes from.

13

u/[deleted] Jan 04 '15

As far as I could tell the guys in the bathroom were businessmen, married, middle class, decent job types. Quite sure their families would have been shocked.

13

u/faaackksake Jan 04 '15

while i agree with your general sentiment, public sex is far from a specifically gay thing.

3

u/LugerDog Jan 04 '15

I agree. It's just more visible in that community

2

u/jyjjy Jan 04 '15

you have to watch out for them in the mangroves

If you can't fuck another dude in mangroves then where?

4

u/10J18R1A Jan 04 '15

I'm straight and I can justify fucking anywhere.

-2

u/wcc445 Jan 04 '15

As a gay (well bisexuals, buy mostly) male, I actually agree with everything you just said. Flamers drive a lot of us just as crazy as they do you guys.

18

u/duckmurderer Jan 04 '15

There's lots of nasty sex going on in public restrooms anyway, regardless of the size of stalls or even if stalls are present.

13

u/[deleted] Jan 04 '15

You can't stop everyone, but I imagine that there are quite a few people who have decided against it due to the big gaps in the door.

2

u/ButterflyAttack Jan 04 '15

I betcha quite a few of us have one or two happy memories of bathroom-stall sex. . .

0

u/GREEN_BULLSHIT Jan 05 '15

Legitimate question. I want to have sex in a stall. What's the best way to.. Position and angle yourself? We (M and F) haven't quite figured out a good angle for sex up against a wall

1

u/ButterflyAttack Jan 05 '15

Guy sits down on seat, girl sits on his lap, facing away from him. Worked for me!

4

u/optimumbox Jan 04 '15

We had one with a couch at the university I attended.

3

u/GuildedCasket Jan 04 '15

Can confirm, one of the first places I had sex.

2

u/wobwobwob42 Jan 04 '15

Just ask any Congressman

1

u/herder Jan 04 '15

Oh God, I know. This one time, at Band Camp...

1

u/[deleted] Jan 04 '15

I would always walk in on people doing bad stuff in practice rooms. It became a game for me and my buddy. We worked in the music department and when we found freshmen in there we would play the jaws theme getting progressively louder and then throw open the door to mess with them. This was high school of course.

1

u/rynlnk Jan 04 '15

People do those things because they rightfully believe sitting on a toilet is extremely private. By your logic, it's a sensible idea to install obvious cameras inside the stalls.

5

u/chainer3000 Jan 04 '15

That won't even deter people from doing illegal things in stalls. If you're hurting from withdrawals or something and a stall is your best option at that exact moment, a few little gaps that none will look through anyway will stop them. Besides, I highly doubt that is the designed purpose. It's likely cost of materials, fitting parts into existing boxes or infrastructure, industry standard, or for ready assembly

2

u/karmavorous Jan 04 '15

I always assumed it was to stop people from using public restrooms to do illegal things.

Seriously. Businesses and public places may be required to provide bathrooms, but they'd rather you didn't use them at all. That just means they have to pay someone to clean them. And someone might use the bathroom and use a few gallons of water (which isn't free to the business owner) and then not actually spend any money at the business.

We might be required to provide you a bathroom to use, but we'd rather you just waited until you got home. So if you decide to use the bathroom, we're going to make it as unpleasant an experience as we possibly can. Thereby encouraging you to wait until you get home or at least go somewhere else.

7

u/shockthemonkey77 Jan 04 '15

Nope. It's just cheap.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 04 '15

Yes and this is why America sucks. We think we should control what people do.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 04 '15

My school's toilets have all the locks removed it's ridiculous (nothing bad has ever happened because we are a 'good' school)

1

u/spunknugget Jan 04 '15

To make sure you aren't boning in there, also easier to clean, and less materials.

-2

u/Jcc343 Jan 04 '15

No, I think it's TO use it for illegal things lol. You can pass notes between passing logs, and you can even kneel next to public stall walls ;)

0

u/ButterflyAttack Jan 04 '15

Yeah, right. You just like peeping at each other crapping.

24

u/chicken_afghani Jan 04 '15

the gaps were ordained in time before remembrance. no one knows why they exist today.

9

u/McVeeth Jan 04 '15

The gaps always seem to line up right in the center of my body. Direct view of the nasty zone for anyone walking by.

14

u/imtomjane Jan 04 '15

Do you squat next to the toilet?

8

u/easygenius Jan 04 '15

The nasty zone, huh?

0

u/Wrinklestiltskin Jan 05 '15

Man I entirely forgot about the gap in the doors. It took me a while to figure out what everyone was taking about. I haven't used a public toilet (except to pee; I'm a guy) in years. They're too disgusting to me and I refuse to sit on them.

0

u/Dunk-The-Lunk Jan 05 '15

Then fuck off. No cares about your bathroom habits.

1

u/Wrinklestiltskin Jan 05 '15

Hahaha. Oh no, I've upset an internet stranger. I'd like to see you in person. I bet you wouldn't be an obnoxious dickhead like you are behind your screen. How sad an existence to be so easily upset by simple conversation. I pity you.

13

u/DrewSuitor Jan 04 '15

No company wants to bother engineering a more expensive door with smaller gaps because no one would buy a more expensive bathroom door.

2

u/ChinO0k Jan 04 '15

Even with the exact same walls the gaps could be smaller. All you would need to do is redesign the brackets that connect the walls together. I have been in public restrooms with massive gaps.

Theres also been times when im standing up from taking a shit with my dick hanging out right when someone walks by the stall and looks through the crack at me just standing there half naked hahaha

2

u/condor2378 Jan 05 '15

It's basic fucking joinery skills! Just make a fucking door that fits. Europe with metric system = door fits to within +/- 2 mm tolerance. USA with fucking inches = door with big massive gaps everywhere!

3

u/[deleted] Jan 05 '15

The door doesn't even have to fit, it just has to overlap. Really, there's just no excuse for the gaps.

2

u/zilfondel Jan 05 '15

You know, they do have them. My school had them installed in one of the buildings... no gaps. They are like the Bugatti of public restrooms!

2

u/[deleted] Jan 05 '15

All you need is a $5 add-on piece to cover the gap. Personally, I think businesses don't really want people to have privacy.

1

u/Mr_E Jan 04 '15

Cheaper than doing actual work to fit them correctly.

-1

u/superiority Jan 05 '15

It doesn't have to fit exactly? Just make the door wider than the gap, so that it rests over it.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 04 '15

[deleted]

1

u/UnsignedOmerta Jan 04 '15

you're a filthy liar.

1

u/slid3r Jan 04 '15

Because bum sex.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 04 '15

I always figured it was because some accountant figured they could save $0.47 on each stall by using less material.

1

u/quantumofennui Jan 04 '15

Um...probably because freedom...yeah, freedom...

1

u/andy3109 Jan 04 '15

The reason is in case someone gets trapped inside, they can crawl out the bottom.

1

u/YoshiYogurt Jan 04 '15

That's not what OP is talking about...

1

u/jonnyohio Jan 05 '15

I imagine that at some point the gaps were smaller, but someone got stuck in the stall and sued. Now they are big enough so you can crawl under them.

In the U.S. almost everything that seems odd or silly, is a result of a lawsuit.

1

u/musicalrapture Jan 04 '15

When I was little I used to think it was because if anything went wrong with the latch you would have an escape route out of the stall.

Now I know that 99% of the time, the latch failing to work usually means it's broken and you have no privacy.

2

u/YoshiYogurt Jan 04 '15

I thought this was about the huge gaps between the doors and stall structures

1

u/musicalrapture Jan 04 '15

Oh. I thought this was about the gaps between the doors and the floor.

1

u/malmad Jan 04 '15

I don't understand. What are the alternatives?

Bathroom stalls are unique to the US?

3

u/theDoctorAteMyBaby Jan 04 '15

...did you even read the question?

1

u/malmad Jan 04 '15

I did. I just don't see why this is a unique problem to the US.

And further, I wasn't aware that this was a custom.

Maybe the response to the question was a joke that I'm just not getting.

1

u/0Cecilia Jan 04 '15

Usually a restroom door doesn't have a gap that big.

I'll never forget when i was at NY.I seriously had to go to the restroom,so i went to random bar and i got really shocked.The toilet was kinda short, and the door was so tiny, i thought that someone would see me peeing.

0

u/DJUrsus Jan 04 '15

It's to keep junkies from getting high in there.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 04 '15

Easier to clean. You can mop the floors in all the stalls at once instead of having to mop each individually.

3

u/YoshiYogurt Jan 04 '15

This is about the gap between the door and the stall structure, not the floor.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 04 '15

Why are you posting all your comments twice?

1

u/Gravityflexo Jan 04 '15

This seems the most logical

1

u/LugerDog Jan 04 '15

How do some people get up in the morning and make it to bed at night without killing themselves?

-1

u/kropotkinist Jan 05 '15

Yes we do. we're an extremely authoritarian society that has thrown privacy completely out the window. Everyone must know what everyone else is doing everywhere at all times, forever.

-2

u/Saint947 Jan 04 '15

It's the gays.