Love local coffee shops. your “refugees are welcome here” sign goes really well with the one that says “bathrooms are for paying customers only”
You’ve clearly never had to deal with people doing hard drugs in the grocery store bathroom and it shows.
Bro I literally manage a coffee shop with an open restroom policy, and I prioritize enforcing that policy and making sure everyone feels comfortable. I’ve dealt with everything from the easy end of the spectrum (people quietly doing hard drugs) to a lady ripping all her hair out and setting it on fire in the sink. I clean up after this stuff day after day and I still feel VERY strongly about the fact that human beings should be allowed the basic decency of a place to poop. Yes, I very frequently end up having to kick someone out of the bathroom for doing drugs, and when I do I always offer them a cup of water on their way out. Because they’re a person and I give a shit…
It’s safer for people to do drugs in (clean) public restrooms than it is for them to do it on the street. It’s also ableist to deny someone the use of a bathroom. There are countless gastrointestinal disorders that cause bathroom urgency and potential incontinence. There are other conditions, like pregnancy, that necessitate quick and easy access to restrooms.
also what makes you think a paying customer wouldnt misuse the toilets in some way, and a person using it without buying something would?
contrary to popular beliefs people with money do drugs, and homeless people need the toilet just like the rest of us
Having a sharps container “for medication injection” in our bathrooms has dropped the amount of needles I find in the bushes and planters down to a whole 2 in the past 4 years since we rolled them out. I used to find them so often I got in the habit of wearing cut resistance gloves in 90 degree weather in case I had to pluck napkins out of the landscaping.
I read a lot of the notes and I really can’t say enough how the “you couldn’t pay me to clean up other people’s shit” comments kinda piss me off. It is not that serious, it’s really not. You dump a bunch of Triade III on it, let it sit for 10 minutes, wipe it up.
If it’s watery you throw absorbent on it like you do throw up, we use a kitty-litter type clay based absorbent. You put a trash bag in the dust pan and sweep it all into the bag.
Takes me 15 minutes to clean an absolutely destroyed bathroom stall in a place that sees THOUSANDS of people daily. It’s a shopping and restaurant area that opens up into a nightlife location after 5pm, with some bars opening at 3pm and several restaurants becoming full nightclubs after 9pm. You pay for parking, but anyone can walk in off the sidewalk and not pay a dime and just hang out until 2am.
On a busy night I cover 3 location’s restrooms (2 venues have multiple rr) but on slow days I’m covering around 7. 7 buildings, thousands of drunks, I get a LOT of bio spills.
Our sharps containers are toolbox-looking things that hang on the wall with a flap that allows things to go in but not come out, ever (rip to like 5 phones that I know of), when full it gets closed, locked, and sent to be incinerated. I literally never touch a needle anymore. If I find one on the ground outside we have sharps shuttles which are long plastic tubes that look like giant tampons with a flip top, you put it on the ground, step on it to hold in place, and sweep the sharp into it. Takes like 20 seconds.
The answer to this entire issue is to TREAT SANITATION WORKERS BETTER not make going to the bathroom a fucking ordeal. Pay me I will clean your bathrooms, let homeless people piss with dignity!!!
