Here's one for the ladies re public toilets . . .

I do.

I just figure like door handles, it's dirty. No big thing.

One place I worked before (a hospital) the flusher was on the floor where you had to step on it.

I only flush with my feet if the bathroom is REALLY gross or if there's no soap for handwashing. The bathrooms at my job get cleaned every day so I don't really see why I should be so paranoid.

Grab some tp, flush with that as a barrier using hand, drop tp in swirling water. The foot thing is too precarious for me - I'd slip and crack my head open.

wahht? i have never heard this.

also, ladies, please stop peeing all over the seats. it is gross.

We men flush too! And I always use my hand. I sometimes (if its really bad) use a tissue to grab hold of the handle thus cleaning the handle as well - all part of my civic pride. People using their feet are making things worse!

x- post! If it's really gross, I just grab some paper and use that while touching the handle.

I guess I found this really surprising because it never even occurred to me to use my feet yet this was something a lot of them had been taught to do since childhood.

I always use my hands - I'm of the same mind as you, E - I'm washing my hands right after, it's fine!

I would like to know why the women who insist on hovering over the seat - why, WHY do they not check to make sure they haven't peed all over the seat when they're through? There is very little I dislike more than sitting in (albeit through the seat covers) someone else's pee.

Unless the seat is really gross and wet (which it often is) I sit on it. It's because of all the squatters out there that the seats get gross in the first place!

Luna, seriously.

it's foul. and then because i dont want to sit in it i end up wiping it off myself!

I've never heard of this foot thing in my life!

I use my hands, and wash after use.

Seats don't get gross if you wipe them with toilet paper before and after use. It's only consideration.

wahht? i have never heard this.

Neither had I! Seriously, ask around and you'll be shocked. Somewhere along the lines I must have missed the foot flushing memo but lots of girls seem to employ this method.

I use my feet whenever I can, actually. It gets kinda tough when the flusher's one of those old-fashioned chain things hanging from a wall-mounted cistern. Luckily I know how to flip and clench.

So it's not gender specific!! Fascinating.

This is the seriously most mentalist thing I've ever heard in my life. Obviously it's not something I give much thought to on a daily basis, but using your feet, WTF?

Also, if it is manky, it is only temporary mank as you're going to go and wash your hands straight away, aren't you? AREN'T YOU?

EXACTLY!

People using their feet are making things worse!

Why, if you're using a tissue to touch it *and* washing your hand?

I always use my foot. deal with it.

I use my foot to flush the most disgusting gas station toilets, and generally wipe the seat down with some TP before sitting at all public toilets, because the lighting is usually bad and I don't want to sit on anyone else's moisture by surprise.

i am ok with people flush with whatever appendage they want, the peeing all over the seat and not cleaning it is my only concern.

bell_labs otm re: flushing. People who don't bother to flush, blergh.

Men Are from Mars, Women Flush Toilets with Their Feet.

I actually fell once trying to use my foot. :(

I don't get hovering--why not just cover the seat in toilet paper?

I never hover. this is indeed annoying

if a bathroom is so gross I feel I can't sit on the toilet I think I'll just hold it.

The thing about the foot thing that gets me the most is that it never would have even occurred to me to do it. It seems so awkward and potentially hazardous which Jessie's experience seems to support!

So if hovering and flushing-with-feet are both common practices, it seems like some designer needs to completely rethink women's public toilets. You guys should get the trough let we have at baseball stadiums.

ENBB OTM, this is the source of my amazement and general WTF-ness. Not the ludicrousness of it (though that too), but just WHO THOUGHT OF THIS AND THEN MADE IT (apparently) COMMONPLACE?

How dirty can a handle get anyway? By this logic you shouldn't be touching any handle, 'cos you know that whoever made that flusher dirty, didn't wash their hands afterwards and then went and opened doors all over the building...

I don't think I started doing it until I worked at the place where you had to use your foot. Obv I don't do it at home b/c it's not the same kind of toilet. Although I wish I could b/c I know what my guy gets up to in there.

http://www.solarnavigator.net/inventors/inventor_images/howard_hughes_time_magazine_cover_1976.jpg

I'm not sure this casts any light on the subject at, uh, hand, but I'm reading a book where the author's father tells him to wash his hands BEFORE using the urinal. "It's not your penis which is dirty," he tells the boy, "it's your hands."

Who cares if your hands get 'dirty' on the handle? Seriously. You're going to wash them afterwards anyway, right?

you should wash your hands before touching yourself, yes. Ladies do you do so before inserting tampons.

Maybe I like kicking that flush handle. WHY DOES THIS BOTHER YOU SO??

DOES A BEAR KICK THE WOODS?

Maybe I like kicking that flush handle. WHY DOES THIS BOTHER YOU SO??

I read this too quickly as "Maybe I like licking that flush handle..."

xpost

I'm sure he does when he's pissed that a hiker got away.

Eazy-E stop ruining my flow.

Yeah, you gotta do it with a karate-noise. Kee-yah! Actually, it gets really tough when you got one of those push-buttons on top of the cistern. Generally then I have to take my shoe off, stand on top of the toilet, and prod down with my big toe until it flushes.

I just lean over and head butt it.

So I take it you ladies don't pick up the newspaper that someone has graciously left behind to share with you?

I never see this in public restrooms. At home, our bathroom also functions as library.

If a men's bathroom has a wheelchair-accessible stall and it's located somewhere where a fella might relax with a paper, sometimes there will be one hanging over the metal wheelchair-help bar.

the ladies' downstairs has baskets of potpourri and a selection of hand lotion. This annoys me for some reason. Maybe I should leave a Hustler in there.

Headbutting the button would seem a bit far-fetched to me. Actually, the totally impossible ones are when you have to pull a little lever above the sink to get the toilet flushed. In such cases I have to remove my right shoe AND sock, grip the lever with my toes, and then perform a backwards somersault.

I have never seen what you just described.

Why do ladies need hand lotion in the restroom?

xpost: That's because you only get them on coaches, trains, and other cramped forms of transport.

b/c soap dries them apparently.

It just too "let's all make our bathroom nice" cutesy shit for me. At home my bathroom is decorated with a framed tampon ad from 1932 and a Gil Elvgren pinup. Ain't no fucking potpourri. and whatever hand lotion G. keeps on his side of the vanity is his business.

I'm seriously thinking of at least leaving an old back issue of playboy in the cutesy bathroom. And maybe a bottle of KY.

Newspapers get left all over the damn place in the bathrooms at the library I work at.

I'm on the moving committee for our company - a full half of the last meeting was taken up with the horrible lighting/colors/lack of artwork in the ladies room. Having spent months on a jobsite w/ no running water, I'm just glad there's flush toilets and sinks.

I think you should, Ms. M :) That would cause such a ruckus here (LDS owned company, barely concedes to nasty habits like smoking and drinking coffee), it would be worth doing on the way out.

...

this is mentalism

Wow you total nutjobs (apart from Erica and the other few voices of sanity).

Have you ever thought that what you've got on your feet - including most likely urine etc. from the cubicle floor, and whatever gunk you have on your shoe - is just further filthifying the handle for whatever hopefully normal hand-using person who's going to follow you?

Lunch? Are you in Tokyo?

Maria? Chuck Truck.

I'm in Australia, heaven forbid there might be places other than the US and UK in the world.

Sorry, that was needlessly sarky.

For some reason I thought you were UK. Whups.

I NEVER use toilets anywhere other than at home - so I don't need to worry about foot flushing, honey buckets, or animals in my toilet.

When I was pregnant I was FORCED to whizz at work, I simply couldn't hold it, but I would NEVER go the number twos. Public toilets disgust me and I get the stage fright without my Pooing Friends Network.

pooing friends network sounds like fun

Help for Pooing at Work

oh my god that reminds me of yesterday. I went to the ladies at work and 3 of the 4 stalls were occupied with my other workmates. And they were all talking to each other cheerily through the cubicle walls.

I just tried to pee as discreetly as I could and hurry off, I hate that kind of thing :/

Recipe for colon cancer. (xp)

Hahah I cant believe that site exists! I've done the camo-cough before :/

This is the weirdest thread I've ever read on ILX.

(I'm sure there are weirder threads on ILX, but I tend not to read things with obviously disgusting titles.)

Germ freaks with overbearing toilet concerns really get on my nerves:

1. The people who use half a roll of TP to muffle the sound of their exertions.
2. Washing the hands in water of 60C will kill the germs on your hands that contact with air hasn't already dealt with. Wash them before and after if you are the freakout type.
3. Foot flushers are welcome to use their bare feet on flushes that are designed for manual operation but it's bad manners to do so while shod.

to be fair, often these "germ freaks" are operating in very small spaces spattered with faeces and urine and menstrual blood by mysteriously inept persons so a little squeamishness is understandable.

this entire thread has completely blown my fucking mind more than any other thread i've ever read on ILX in five years of patronage.

WTF PEOPLE use your hand then wash your hand then leave!

Astonishing.

"I know, to prevent a tiny bit of wee or poo transferring to my hand from the handle, which I'll then wash off immediately, I'll use my SHOE which has been walking around all over the much more likely to be wee/poo-infused FLOOR, thus making the handle EVEN MORE DISGUSTING than it could ever conceivably have been before!"

Yes, problem solved, people.

Americans can do what they like, Charlie, the American dream says so :)

Yeah you all are the mentalists. I like kicking the handle with my shod foot and shall do so until the day I die. Stay out of our country (or at least public bathrooms if you live here) if you don't like it.

(NB: Cuntishness applied for comic effect only)

OK, I set up the group, let's see what transpires...

http://www.flickr.com/groups/footflushers/

It's going to quickly turn crepey.

Yeah, I guess...anyway you are one of a very large group it turns out

80 million Americans foot flush - surveys say, rather than touch the flusher.

The company that did the survey have a very interesting website.
http://www.footflush.com/
They're really playing up the clean feet aspect.

xpost

I stand proud. On the flush lever.

merkins be PARANOID...

Yeah, they so scared GERMS and COMMUNISTS and TERRISTS gonna get them.

(Of course, now I'm paranoid, I've been checking the handles in the loo for shoeprints. But they appear to be fine.)

I think maybe once or twice EVER ive seen this US style low-handle flusher here, hence why this whole debate baffles me.

As I continually state I myself am not paranoid. I just like kicking the thing.

In fact until someone posted a pic I had this image in my head of ladies karate kicking the wall above the loo :/

i too like various unhygenic and selfish acts, but i refrain from doing them in public because it's unpleasant.

xpost

tuomas to thread

xpost

You are all Jerry Seinfelds. I do not believe using your foot on the lever is any less hygienic the using the hand you just wiped your shit with. As many others have noted there *is* soap and water in the bathroom. Use it.

Lick your hand.

Now lick the bottom of your shoe.

See?

OTM. you will wash my foot-transfer-leavins from your hands and thank me for it.

xpost

BUT! BUT! BUT!

BUT!!!!

xpost!!

Any men feel like owning up to being foot-flushers, or is this a uniquely female phenomenon?

I know Louis Jagger already did, but he doesn't count.

i am a man. i flush the urinal with my mighty penis.

Do you also then knock all the other guys at the stalls over when you turn around? =)

I use my foot to flush the most disgusting gas station toilets, and generally wipe the seat down with some TP before sitting at all public toilets, because the lighting is usually bad and I don't want to sit on anyone else's moisture by surprise.

-- Rock Hardy, Tuesday, August 14, 2007 11:53 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

Chuck Truck? I do indeed need to do so, we've got a truck with a blown head gasket that needs to be taken away.

I was quite sure i had killed the thread with that last post.

I tried to flush with my foot earlier. It was kinda fun in an 8-year-old-boy-practicing-karate kind of way.

I do not believe using your foot on the lever is any less hygienic the using the hand you just wiped your shit with.

Well, I use paper, but whatever floats your boat...

I got my first photo!
http://www.flickr.com/groups/footflushers/

I was totally baffled by this thread, until someone explained the American style handle thing. It'd take much more acrobatics to flush an European toilet.

But still, I think this is silly. Western people are way too afraid of germs. When I was a kid I used to drink water out of puddles, and nothing ever came out of it.

I like that guy's style with the sensor-thing. If I can remember to bring my camera, I'll add mine.

I was stunned to discover that MY OWN SON, WHOM I THOUGHT I'D RAISED CORRECTLY, is a foot-flusher.

This is outrageous. Can I take it the sort of person who flushes with their foot is also the sort of person who believes their child's high chair is crawling with MRSA as insinuated by the Dettol advert?

You are all Jerry Seinfelds. lol

There is now a commercial on for some kind of lysol something or other where the concerned mom realizes her home is infested with omgkillergerms and flushed with her foot. Ha!

I have never heard of this. Insane!! I flush with my hand, and I don't use those stupid paper things on the seats unless the seat is wet and/or gross. A good handwashing surely, surely suffices?
I only hover if it's one of those nasty public loos with the stainless steel bowl & no plastic seat.

I've gone without foot-flushing and paper sitting my whole life, I'm at the ripe old age of 32 and I have yet to contract cholera/scabies/whooping cough/hemorrhoids or whatever everyone's afraid of catching from toilets. Then again of course I do have that nasty oozing rash all over my ass...

AMEN!!!!

Many years' of xposts, but

t's the common name for the travelling outhouses that everyone has to deal with if you go to a big group event in the U.S.

They are branded as Honey Buckets.

Whatever, I was trying to be funny. I thought everyone knew about Honey Buckets.

― aimurchie, Tuesday, August 14, 2007 5:50 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark

I heard of a "honey bucket" from a friend's brother who is living in the woods in Alaska. To him, it was an actual bucket with a lid modified to be a seat. In the winter when it's -50ºF, it's too cold to go to the outhouse in the middle of the night, so you keep a honey bucket right outside the door, which you take inside to shit in. He said that obviously the shit very quickly freezes solid, so before long you have quite a collection.

That is what I thought people were talking about before, not a comparatively cushy, luxe porta-potty.