memes

As someone from Europe I can guarantee you that 5-10cm (2-4") at the bottom and 30cm (12") at the top with almost no gap between the door and wall are by far enough to not suffocate. Maybe put a vent in the ceiling for good measure.

I am so jealous. My old work had stalls with gaps. The whole room was a bit tight, so you couldn't just back up far enough to see the feet of the person in the stall. The locks were installed in such a way that if you pulled the door a little, it would open. (So a discreet soft pull on the door was not a good way of determining occupancy.)

The only way to know was to look in the gap.

I was about to go in a stall when I made eye contact with the current occupant of said stall. She just yelled out "YOU CREEPIN?"

I am of course not socially awkward at all and was completely normal when I replied back "no... Sorry."

Actual privacy in a multi-stall bathroom would be so nice.

All you need to know is that toilet stalls in the USA (and Canada) have huge gaps around the doors, unlike other countries. You have to carefully position your head so you're not making accidental eye contact with people outside, and somehow relax knowing everyone can see you taking a shit.

This is a typical public restroom

https://imgur.com/a/SVtDTpu

I’ve always believed that the whole stall concept was developed by some kind of pervert.

I mean, even when they grant proper visual privacy, that’s just one of our five senses. You can still hear and smell what’s going on next door - and I swear in some cases just about taste it.

To me, “privacy” means all senses.

Not to mention having weirdos peek over the top of the stall, which has happened.

Yeah, being literally as cheap as possible is the main design driver for poop stalls with large gaps. Very forgiving installation, so the cheapest possible labor can put them in to inconsistently built bathrooms with cheap parts using the least amount of materials on the cheapest hinges with the cheapest paint and cheap replacement parts when whatever is in there fails.

Also cheap to repair when it breaks.

Also, some amount of gap at the floor level means the whole room can be sloped down to a single drain when a toilet backs up instead of being contained in a single stall. That is also cheaper.

Eventually, enshittification will hit public restrooms hard and we won't even have dividers at all. Just a single, giant hole in the floor everyone is expected to pee and shit into while a bank of CCTV cameras watches every angle of the room.

"Wanna help me wipe bud? This one is particularly sticky, I need to eat some more beans"

I don’t know if any of that is true,

As someone who worked retail for many years when I was younger, I can assure you that it is absolutely true. People get up to insane shit in public restrooms.

So the non-private pooing is actually continuous with American moral puritanism. That makes sense.

Public library where I grew up had full height stall walls, but the doors had been removed. There were always several homeless people shitting in there. But hey, at least they weren't fucking, right?