Best and Worst of Restrooms

[Rothman]

Worst bathroom:  Sheremetyevo International Airport, Moscow, Russia, 1995.

I have found surprisingly clean porta-potties, but it's a dice roll.  Walmart bathrooms are surprising as well. 

[CoreySamson]

Worst might be the one in the dormitory at my old church summer camp.

Upon further reflection, that one was the worst, but it wasn't public. Worst (I think) was the Tiger truck stop in Grosse Tete, LA.

[texaskdog]

Best Buccees, they have attendents in there at all times.  Worst any small gas station or busy bar.

[bandit957]

A few years ago, I used to go to local festivals all the time. (I don't think I went to any last year. I'm not sure why.) Portable restrooms always had pee and poo everywhere. Best all, people used to put things in the toilet bowls all the time. I saw plastic Kroger grocery bags, a metal pickle jar lid, a cardboard Cheez-It box, a Geico Gecko fan, a phone book, and other items in the toilets. I remember one time, someone put a pair of jeans in the toilet, and I saw the maintenance crew fishing it out.

[bandit957]

Also, the restrooms at my high school always smelled like pee mixed with cigarettes, and people used to put things in the toilets all the time.

And I remember one time in college, there was poo all over the wall above the urinal. A professor saw it and said, "I hope that's mud."

[renegade]

Gas stations with restrooms detached from the main convenience store building: 0/5

There are very few of these left near me but I hear some other places such as Cleveland still have them:

The bathrooms attached to the gas station that had separated doors accessed from outside.

1. Go ask for the key first. It usually had a big block of wood or a yardstick attached to it

2. Enter. The door is gross and has been painted 50 times.

3. Now you are inside. You first notice how tiny everything is inside bathrooms before the Americans With Disabilities act happened. Stalls, sinks and all that are 2.5 feet wide or less.

4. Everything is slippery ceramic tile. Not the 12" tile you see today. 1" tile. Grout is everywhere and is super gross. Absolutely no drywall anywhere. Ugly drains in the floor. Also super gross.

5. Usually 2 commodes and a urinal or vice versa.

6. Head for the commode. Pass a mega dusty but also rusty electric heater built into the wall. It is tiny, often broken, noisy if working and the only source of heat in the room.

7. Open the stall. The lock hasn't worked in years and is gone. 2 inch hole that anyone can look through. Rust everywhere.

8. Toilet paper dispenser is very strange in some varied manner and is rusty chrome. Toilet paper has been peed on.

9. Roulette! Is there a paper condom for you to put between your butt and the toilet seat? There's a dispenser for one (much more likely than today actually, AIDS might have had something to do with it) but are there any?

10. The toilet seat. It's black. This is so you can't tell if it's dirty.

11. The toilet has a handle. No electric eyes for flushing back then. All the chrome has worn off. Major condensation on the pipes so much that they are green with corrosion.

12. Let's look at a urinal now. It goes all the way into to the floor. It stinks. There are probably a couple urinal cakes that are almost gone. They aren't helping. There are cigarette butts floating around. Brown ones, not Lights. There may be a urinal mat. The handle is even more worn.

13. Time to wash your hands. No hot water. The hand soap comes out of a chrome thing and is powder. You dry your hands on a long towel that you pull out of a roller with a noisy clutch. The roller has a small mirror that has clouded up on the inside. You then leave through the 2-foot wide door. If there are other men using the room they are hippies or guys who look like it's 1975 despite it being 1987.


Anyone have anything more to add? This is a living document.

#7:  That two-inch hole has a purpose.

[Takumi]

^ signature wildly appropriate

[jeffandnicole]

Lowes and Home Depot have surprisingly large, clean bathrooms.

[Big John]

14.  The smell of smoke.

[Roadgeekteen]

Hotel restrooms are good. Gas station restrooms suck.

[Scott5114]

Personally, I find any public restroom to be hit or miss. You might go in right after someone shits all over the place, or you might go in right after it's been cleaned. Maybe it's a busy day and nobody's been by to refill the towels. Basically, while some bathrooms are chronically neglected, even the best ones can be total pits if you go in at the wrong time.

[CtrlAltDel]

Worst in my recent memory was at the Wisconsin State Fair, I think 2016. I'm extremely picky on the road about where I stop; if not a welcome center. which is usually better kept than standard rest areas, it has to be newish, or a chain I trust like Holiday or Kwik Trip.

While I definitely prefer a clean bathroom as well, I have to admit that I'm not picky enough to strategize or plan ahead to ensure that I can use one. Given that I'm usually in and out in two minutes tops, I just suck it up if it's suboptimal. That said, there have been a few times I've turned around and left right after entering, but not too many, really.

[bandit957]

You might go in right after someone shits all over the place

It's always hilarious when this happens.

[1995hoo]

The two worst I've ever used:

Men's room at Rasta's on the east side of Cozumel. I had to take a dump. No toilet seat. There was a piece of wood hanging from the wall and a stick, alongside a hook. I quickly realized you were to hang your shorts and underwear on the hook and use the stick for balance while positioning your arse over the bowl. When you were done, there was no running water to flush; instead, you went outside to a huge rain bucket, dipped a pail in it, and then poured that down the toilet. It wasn't overly clean, either. (Throwing the TP in a wastebasket didn't bother me because that's not unusual in that part of Mexico.)

Worst in the USA: I went down to Blacksburg in 1994 for a football game and I had to take a dump when I got there. The toilets were in a small building in the grass field they were using for parking. There was one crapper and it wasn't in an enclosed booth or stall. Rather, there was a cinderblock wall that came up about shoulder-high, but what made it worse was that across from it, there was a folding chair set up facing the shitter for the next guy to use while he waited. WTF, are you supposed to sit there looking at each other having a conversation? I'm sure I've used dirtier ones, and I've seen others with no privacy (the ones in my high school had no doors and the TP was chained to the wall and invariably sopping wet), but that one at VPI sticks out in infamy because of that arrangement with the folding chair. Plus I had to go badly enough that I didn't notice the folding chair until after I was sitting on the toilet. At least nobody came along to wait while I was doing my business.

As far as "best" goes, I don't know. I'm not all that picky about where I stop to take a leak, and I try really hard to avoid having to take a dump when in transit from place to place. I tend to remember the nasty places and forget the good ones.

[bandit957]

The stinkiest bathroom I've ever used was last July when I went up to Muncie. There was a gas station bathroom that smelled absolutely horrible. It smelled like a rhinoceros ate a bunch of Brussels sprouts and then exploded all over the place. But everyone in the store was smiling their asses off as if nothing was wrong.

Also I remember going into a McDonald's restroom once on a roadtrip and noticing it smelled of vomit.

[Bruce]

The best restroom in Seattle is the semi-public one on the 40th floor skylobby of the Municipal Tower. Clean, well-kept, and comes with a great view in the lobby and a working water refilling station.

[index]

Gas stations with restrooms detached from the main convenience store building: 0/5

There are very few of these left near me but I hear some other places such as Cleveland still have them:

The bathrooms attached to the gas station that had separated doors accessed from outside.

1. Go ask for the key first. It usually had a big block of wood or a yardstick attached to it

2. Enter. The door is gross and has been painted 50 times.

3. Now you are inside. You first notice how tiny everything is inside bathrooms before the Americans With Disabilities act happened. Stalls, sinks and all that are 2.5 feet wide or less.

4. Everything is slippery ceramic tile. Not the 12" tile you see today. 1" tile. Grout is everywhere and is super gross. Absolutely no drywall anywhere. Ugly drains in the floor. Also super gross.

5. Usually 2 commodes and a urinal or vice versa.

6. Head for the commode. Pass a mega dusty but also rusty electric heater built into the wall. It is tiny, often broken, noisy if working and the only source of heat in the room.

7. Open the stall. The lock hasn't worked in years and is gone. 2 inch hole that anyone can look through. Rust everywhere.

8. Toilet paper dispenser is very strange in some varied manner and is rusty chrome. Toilet paper has been peed on.

9. Roulette! Is there a paper condom for you to put between your butt and the toilet seat? There's a dispenser for one (much more likely than today actually, AIDS might have had something to do with it) but are there any?

10. The toilet seat. It's black. This is so you can't tell if it's dirty.

11. The toilet has a handle. No electric eyes for flushing back then. All the chrome has worn off. Major condensation on the pipes so much that they are green with corrosion.

12. Let's look at a urinal now. It goes all the way into to the floor. It stinks. There are probably a couple urinal cakes that are almost gone. They aren't helping. There are cigarette butts floating around. Brown ones, not Lights. There may be a urinal mat. The handle is even more worn.

13. Time to wash your hands. No hot water. The hand soap comes out of a chrome thing and is powder. You dry your hands on a long towel that you pull out of a roller with a noisy clutch. The roller has a small mirror that has clouded up on the inside. You then leave through the 2-foot wide door. If there are other men using the room they are hippies or guys who look like it's 1975 despite it being 1987.


Anyone have anything more to add? This is a living document.

3 1/2. No baseboards on the walls. There's spider webs, spiders, and maybe you'll spot a few house centipedes and/or roaches if you're lucky. Somehow things other than bacteria manage to live in this god-forsaken excuse for a restroom. Also, a lot of visible piping. Fluorescent lights which may or may not have a casing, buzzing their miserable life away. "Why here?" They might be thinking. "Why not a nice clean office in Seattle? Why an awful, unmaintained gas station bathroom in Podunk County, Midwest, population 4, not counting hogs? What did I do to deserve this?"

3 3/4. You may have to turn the lights on when entering. They're flickering and dim.

7 1/2. Graffiti and etchings everywhere inside the stall. Mandatory: Dick drawings, "fuck you", swastikas, a suspicious phone number, and racial slurs. It's like a throwback to middle school.

10 1/2. The toilet bowl has visible lines of build-up where the water flows in to refill it.

12 1/2. The lever on the hand soap dispenser is gross and wet.

13 1/2. The sink is really small, the flow is horrible, and you have to get your hands up against the ceramic just to get any amount of water on your hands, which feels disgusting. Drainage is also horrible.

14. You walk out. There may or may not be a filthy mat for you to wipe your shoes on. You notice the bottom of your feet are sticky and there's no mat, so you decide to step by a puddle of rainwater and scrape your shoes on the asphalt furiously to get the piss syrup off the bottom of your shoes, as to not get it in your car.

[roadman65]

The worst was a gas station on US 11 in Middlesex, PA. A Texaco once had the dirtiest bowl I ever saw. Brown shit all over it. Stunk to high hell. And outside the station too.

[renegade]

You might go in right after someone shits all over the place

It's always hilarious when this happens.

Not if you have to shit!

[Rothman]

Clifton Springs Service Area bathrooms on the Thruway were decent.

[Scott5114]

13 1/2. The sink is really small, the flow is horrible, and you have to get your hands up against the ceramic just to get any amount of water on your hands, which feels disgusting. Drainage is also horrible.

Alternately, such a mass of hard water buildup on the aerator that the water sprays out in a cone and is so high pressure it hurts your hands when you put them under it.

[roadman65]

You might go in right after someone shits all over the place

It's always hilarious when this happens.

Not if you have to shit!

No shit was growing on the side of bowl. Not skid marks.

[renegade]

Y'all need to find better places to do business.   

[CapeCodder]

Clifton Springs Service Area bathrooms on the Thruway were decent.

Last time I was there they were spotless. Clifton Springs was also the last place I had Roy Rogers.

[SectorZ]

Walmart are always way better than normal. When I worked there in the late-90's they always had a maintenance person on duty, and on busy weekend periods sometimes two at once.

Cumberland Farms tends to be very good, which is impressive because sometimes they've only got two total people on-duty.

I am amazed how generally clean most port-o-potties are, considering some are only cleaned once per week. Cycling I sometimes have to depend on the system of them out there (and Covid sucked for that since many last year that were seasonal were never put into service). I love the wheelchair-accessible ones, considering they're big enough I can bring the bike in with me.

Grossest can tend to be gas station ones that aren't accessible from inside the store, but I think we've reached consensus on that in the thread