Of course. There is no more sacrosanct place than the the toilet. You stop speaking at the urinals as symbolic gesture of acknowledgment of the sanctity of the toilet. Once you step away from the urinal, and are safely at the sink, you may again begin a conversation. Without such basic rules of etiquette, there can be no civilization.
Absolutely. Just think about the practicalities of carrying on such a conversation: if you turn your head toward your colleague, you are of necessity also turning your head toward the dude in the middle, and might therefore be perceived by said dude to be crossing into the package-checking-out red zone. If, on the other hand, you don't turn your head, then you'd be talking to the wall, which is just silly and awkward. Much moreso than the awkward hesitation which must follow the abrupt halt of conversation upon arrival at the urinals. QED.
What you do is freak out, because you can't pee when there are people around, so do you just drop your pants and hold your dick for a while, to be, you know, sociable, or do you pretend to have gone to the bathroom just to wash your hands, or do you just leave, go back to your desk, and cry?
Anyway, I don't initiate talk at the urinals, but some people have caught me mid-stream and struck up conversations with me. And yes, my thought is always either "Can't this wait??" or, "You really don't need to be making conversation right now."
See the first I, Robot (the book) for support for Tim's position.
OTOH I've had many conversations in the restroom, and attended a solo violin recital of sorts in one; you just have to know your audience. This hasn't happened much now that I don't live in a dormitory.
I will say that, in a mixed-gender restroom, you probably shouldn't use the urinal while a girl is brushing her teeth four feet away, depending on the girl, because she might not be cool with that.
and attended a solo violin recital of sorts in one
You are a deviant, w-lfs-n, a seriously disturbed deviant.
What I want to know is, why do complete strangers feel like it's perfectly acceptable to rip off audible farts next to me, simply because they're pissing at the time?
And then there's this.
See the first I, Robot (the book) for support for Tim's position.
If anyone could work in an Asimov reference on a post about the social taboos surrounding urinal conversations, it would have to be you, w-lfs-n. Indeed.
I will say that, in a mixed-gender restroom, you probably shouldn't use the urinal
I've never seen a mixed-gender restroom with a urinal. That's just strange.
More on topic: what's really annoying is when one of the men goes to a stall and the other to a urinal, and both keep talking the whole time, until the guy who went to the urinal finally leaves.
Actually, I think the answer to the question depends on the placement of the third party. If he's between the interlocutors, the conversation should stop, but if not, I say it's permissible to continue talking. Staring at the wall is obligatory.
I should be ashamed to admit that I know this, but w-lfs-n is thinking of Caves of Steel, rather than I, Robot. Right author, though.
As to the specific situation, I'm with Labs. And who doesn't stare at the wall in that situation. Nevermind peeking, you have to aim.
eb, I've seen mixed gender bathrooms with urinals. And I think I was in there while a guy peed while a woman brushed her teeth.
So much for my strategy of using the presence or absence of urinals as a guide to whether or not a restroom is the men's room. (This applies only when the signs on the doors, if any, are not clear as to which is which, of course. I do not simply walk into the room and look around.)
I wonder if the mixed-restrooms with urinals were originally male, but then changed later. I'm pretty sure that the mixed ones I've seen (in relatively new dorms) were built to be mixed-gender in the first place. They even had signs posted asking the guys to please sit down.
I find it illuminating that (at #3) Ogged feels obliged to "drop his pants" to take a pee. No wonder others don't want to speak to him. Would you want to step up to a urinal where Ogged is taking a pee with his pants dropped down to his feet? I rest my case.
Even the kind, grandfatherly Ralph Luker is taking shots at me now. But I owe you one Ralph, because if you re-read the comment, you'll see that in fact people seem quite eager to talk to me, and now I think I know why.
Ralph, you're really bitter about the cliopatria thing, aren't you?
Actually, Cliopatria doesn't want Ogged coming over to her place until he pulls his pants up and washes his hands.
"See the first I, Robot (the book) for support...."
Is it possible you're thinking of The Caves of Steel, Mr. w-lfs-n, or is there a story you're referring to that I'm not recalling? Powell and Donovan investigate a lavatory robot that, under the First Law, can't compliment a patron on the size of his organ, or something? Susan Calvin noticed she was the only woman existing in that universe, and therefore there were no bathrooms for women? Something?
No. No. We only serve cakes and tea; and them only to people who don't take a leak with their pants down around their ankles.
"If anyone could work in an Asimov reference on a post about the social taboos surrounding urinal conversations, it would have to be you, w-lfs-n."
The first time I met Roger Zelazny is when I looked up from the urinal and he was using the one next to me. Howzat? (1974, if you give a damn.)
Although I met Isaac, I dunno, several dozen times, I'm don't think it was ever at an adjoining urinal. On the other hand, he was so omnipresent at sf events in NYC and the region, during the mid-Seventies, it really wouldn't have been at all memorable.
"I should be ashamed to admit that I know this...."
Really? Why? Whatever it is probably applies to me about a hundred times over, I suspect.
Here is the truth of it.
There are two types of men. Those who talk to one another when they're urinating, and those who don't.
And never the twain shall meet.
We only serve cakes and tea; and them only to people who don't take a leak with their pants down around their ankles.
And it sounds like Ogged is in for some death, Izzard-style.
So glad, so very glad, that the ladies' restroom has stalls. With doors.
And, in case you wondered, we generally pause the conversation for pee if one of the involved parties is peeing. But if someone else is in there peeing and their pee isn't too loud then we will likely continue the conversation. Someone peeing in the stall between you and the person you're talking wtih qualifies as "too loud" most of the time.
So how 'bout the network show-which-must-not-be-named (and which I never watched) that had the infamous mixed-gender bathroom... how did they go about portraying this?
I'll cop to a mistake regarding Asimov. I haven't read either book in years and years. (I can't remember a thing about Caves of Steel. Is it a Robot book, is it a Foundation book? I read most/all of those, and a few outside that category. I'd look it up myself but I'm doing a radio show.)
There will be (which is why there's a computer in the studio). At the moment there is not.
Our coed fraternity had coed bathrooms and everybody talked non-stop, but then we all knew each other very well and were usually drunk.
And you all married each other and had babies!
I think it's a pretty good rule that your experiences don't generalize well.
I do have a post up currently with the projected playlist (since I am being super anal and planned the whole thing out (despite one screwup already)).
And I don't recognize a thing. Which is why I was hoping there was a stream. I like the picture on the "Folk" box at WHPK's site.
"I'd look it up myself but I'm doing a radio show."
You can't use Google, but you can post comments on comment threads?
In any case.
"And I don't recognize a thing."
I'm more or less -- mostly more -- dead ignorant of music, be it pop, hip, cool, alternative, or whatever, of the last twenty odd years, with a handful of exceptions, for a variety of sad reasons, but I at least certainly know from Robert Fripp, John Cale, and Fred Frith, even if everyone else on the list is expectedly unknown to me. But surely at least Cale and Fripp are pretty damn well known?
w-lfs-n is right. There is a reference to bathroom taboos in Caves of Steel, but I, Robot has a Donovan and Powell story in which resources are so scarce that they have to recycle their waste products. No one can bear to think about it so they can't fix the robot in charge of the process. Donovan and Powell fix it but then no one on the colony can stand to have any contact with them either.
Okay, I am a total geek. That story isn't in I, Robot either, and Donovan and Powell aren't the protagonists. The title is Strikebreaker, although I'm not sure which story collection it is.
I suppose it's nothing to be ashamed of, but when people in real life figure out that I have approximately total recall of the plots of most SF published between 1930 and 1980, they have a tendency to look at me funny.
You didn't give us enough information. Where is the third person? Seems to me that if the only free urinals are on opposite sides of the third person, then it's rude to continue the conversation. If he's hiding out in the corner, though, then you're fine. Of course, I might just be an intolerable boor.
Aha, now I see why Ogged is so popular at the Mineshaft.
Well, it certainly isn't for his violin playing.
"I suppose it's nothing to be ashamed of, but when people in real life figure out that I have approximately total recall of the plots of most SF published between 1930 and 1980, they have a tendency to look at me funny."
Since that's the story of my life, I kinda adjusted to that to a large extent around age 7, and after some other adjustments in my teen years, kinda learned to live with it as a permanent condition, though, to be sure, not unscarred by some connected neuroses and social lacks.
What the hell, though, I could be weird and neurotic about bathrooms and showers and my naked body, and the like, and I'm not. So there are always trade-offs.
The cure for the above, however, LizardBreath, is hanging out with more sf fans (interesting and enjoyable ones, that is, not just annoying people who happen to know lots about sf, of which there are too many). The crappy thing is you just missed Lunacon. Man, what sucky timing.
You people are animals. Why not simply lay down on the ground, unzip, and pee directly into the air, creating a Busby Berkeley-esque show of urine streams for passers-bye? (And no, I don't know what the analogous suggestion for women would be).
The general rule is, "No talking in the bathroom." This is a hard and fast rule where stalls are involved. In the vast majority of cases, there is a complete bar against beginning a conversation in a bathroom (unless, obviously, at the Mineshaft). Basically, the only reason you should continue a conversation as you approach and use the urinal is b/c the conversation is excellent.
Degenerate freaks.
Why not simply lay down on the ground, unzip, and pee directly into the air, creating a Busby Berkeley-esque show of urine streams for passers-bye?
You lost me. Lay what on the ground? You want an em-dash, not a hyphen, if you're going to interrupt yourself mid-sentence to bid us your adieux.
Anyway, I think the primary reason for not following your suggestion is that the logistics would be impossible. You'd have to make sure everyone was micturating with more or less the same pressure, and for optimum effect you'd want a coordinated waving back-and-forth, which would probably require a lot of rehearsal. And so on.
You know, Norman Mailer used to say that the very first paper he read every morning was the NY Post; it made him so angry, it got his blood flowing. You, w-lfs-n, are my NY Post.
Lay/lie indeed. (And, to be honest, I thought I might be wrong about "passers-bye," but, in a blow for freedom against the grammatical tyrrany of the Order of w-lfs-n, I decided not to check).
The general rule is, "No talking in the bathroom." This is a hard and fast rule where stalls are involved. In the vast majority of cases, there is a complete bar against beginning a conversation in a bathroom (unless, obviously, at the Mineshaft). Basically, the only reason you should continue a conversation as you approach and use the urinal is b/c the conversation is excellent.
Degenerate freaks.
Tim is plainly serious, and it gladdens my heart to see him revealing his neurosis with such unselfconscious vehemence.
Is obligated actually a word?
I guess if Mr. w-lfs-n hasn't queried, it must be.
Bad Visual, SCMT.
What I notice so often about the difference between europeans and amis is not so much the restroom etiquette as the lift etiquette. Americans, good and straight as they are, stand facing the door, always. Europeans tie themselves in knots trying to make sure they show no-one their backs.
For urinal discomfort, I' ll take Holland anytime.
No conversations. Last year, as I sat in a mens' room stall at the Tucson airport, someone sat down in the adjoining stall, called someone on his cell phone, and carried on a long, animated conversation. I didn't realize quite what was going on at first, and thought there were two guys next door - I've never been so creeped out. What the hell is the matter with people anymore?
I had a roommate who used to do that. Talk to poor, unknowing women as he sat on the throne.
lift etiquette
Well that explains it. During my one trip to Europe, nearly everybody acted like they'd never seen anybody pee in an elevator before. So indignant!
Until apostropher's comment, I honestly thought Austro was talking about lifting the toilet seat.
Joe, I had the same confusion. Took me a few reads to make sense of it.
lol. See, a common language etc. I plain forgot that you kids call em elevators. Whereas, to me, those are things small men put on shoes. Sorry guys.
things small men put on shoes
Really? Because we call those lifts. No kidding.
:) evil aint I. Actually I think "risers" is the term.
So I noted an example of odd restroom behavior yesterday which I had never before seen. Almost as soon as I walked in to the room, the person in the stall flushed the toilet and stood up. They then simply stood there, refusing to leave the stall. After I finished using the bathromm left, someone else came in, and the original person in the stall still didn't leave, as if they simply refused to have it known that they were the person using the bathroom. While I can imagine one (olfactory) reason someone wouldn't want that known, such a reason wasn't operative in this case. Anyone care to speculate? Also, this is the right thread to comment on this issue, right?