From what I’ve heard Europe is way more gatekeepey with their bathrooms. Having ones you have to pay for? It’s extremely rare for a place to not have a bathroom here, even in a city.
Edit: I think I grew up in one of the states where they’re pretty strict about having bathrooms. Blue states rule lol
Well, it is public bathrooms you have to pay for here, as they are run commercially. But each place that offers food or drink and where you can sit down (so e.g. a food vendor cart is excempt) has to have free toilets for their customers. Some might be better, some might be worse (I’ve been in a McD in a … not so well off part of a town and it was horrible - you had to ask for a key, and they had this horrible, dim bluish light that is supposed to reduce drug use). But customers toilets are free.
A friend of ours had a restaurant at a hiking trail in a forest, and he had put up a donation box for those who just wanted to use a toilet without eating or drinking there, which I consider fair.
It’s honestly pretty rare for places to not have one in the US unless you’re in the downtown part of a major city. Sometimes when walking downtown, it feels like every shop’s bathrooms are staff-only.
The ADA has bathroom/stall quantity requirements in the US for certain types of businesses. Our machine shop almost had to put in more toilets despite us having 3 toilets and 3 employees. I believe it’s based off of square footage. We are also required to have 28 parking spots for literally no reason.
At first I though “surely this is about the US”, but no, even in the US at least some states require public bathrooms in all coffee shops, cafe, restaurants etc. Some states have exceptions depending on the size of the establishment and some states do not have this regulation at all.
I also just checked Dutch and some other countries’ laws. Public bathrooms are required for new establishments with no exceptions. I have not found a EU-wide regulation though.
Vancouver, B.C. Canada Checking in, bathrooms are only required if you have indoor seating, so a lot of places didnt reinstall their tables post pandemic, and thus kept their washrooms closed
This is probably one of those “varies by state” things, as usual, but in my state anything classed as a restaurant on its business license must provide a bathroom. Sometimes this causes them considerable inconvenience, and sometimes you wouldn’t want to use it anyway, but it is there.
Yeah that’s what I was saying. I think it’s any place that serves prepared food or drink is required here in Ohio. But I think they can restrict use to customers only.
Per us health code if you have indoor seating and can eat at the place you are required to have a restroom available to customers, if you do not you can get shut down.
You got the specific statute number? Because I know half a dozen fast food places I could go to right now that violate it if it’s actually real (it’s not).
Looks like I remembered wrong, but it is a requirement in Michigan, so, varies state by state. You’re required if you have a maximum occupancy of 15 or more looks like
The lack toilets in every imaginable place is insultingly ableist and very degrading. It’s like people are ashamed we’re fucking people and need to piss and shit all the time. And then the cops have the gull to threaten me with fines when I take a leak under a tree in a park. You literally treat dogs better than people.
If its anything like Vancouver, its quite possibly in response to doing absolutely nothing about a homelessness crisis and the open drug use that results from that. So yeah, ablist and degrading, as well as anti poor
where i live we have minimal tap water flow at night due to drought, and coffeeshops like to pull this ‘wc is closed since water is off’ and now i am stuck with a ton of caffeine filling my bladder :(
exactly. pee is not really a problem, and the odor could still be manageable with minimum sanitation. A coffeeshop with open wc would earn its owner a lot of love points, and probably more clients too.
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