Let’s Get Rid of Pay-Toilets Please!

I had the inspiration for this article while I was writing last Friday’s destination piece about Camden Market. Check it out if you haven’t already, it’s a little guide to one of my favourite places on earth. I love the shops, the products, the food, the people, nearly everything about it is great. There’s just one not-so-tiny flaw that really gets my hackles up about the place. Some of the bathrooms are paid bathrooms, and I hate that.

I have mostly encountered these kinds of washrooms in England, Mexico, and Italy, and essentially they’re toilets that you need to pay to use. Ask anyone who has ever heard of them and they’ll tell you that your money is a contribution which helps keep the bathroom clean and well maintained. The going-rate, if you will, can range anywhere from 10 cents to a full dollar of whatever currency the country uses. As far as I’ve seen there are three varieties of washroom.

The first type of bathroom is usually attended by one of the cleaning staff members, and has a little bowl or tray into which you can put your money. It is polite to pay and you do seem like a bit of a mean-spirited person if you don’t, but you’re by no means forced to put any money whatsoever into that tray. I have no problem with these. In fact these aren’t so much paid bathrooms as they are donation bathrooms.

The second also has an attendant, and when you give them the money they give you some toilet paper to use. The third type has turnstile gates at the entrance, so that unless one has mastered the art of parkour, you won’t be able to get in without paying. This article, and my burning ire, is directed at these bathrooms.

Let me be clear that while Camden Market has inspired this piece, they do have bathrooms on the lower levels that are free and they are by no means the only offender. King’s Cross, Nymphenburg Palace, Neuschwanstein, Brighton Train Station, and even the City of London have ‘public’ washrooms which require you to pay. I have a bone to pick with these and every other paid bathroom in existence, so Camden Market is merely a singular skirmish upon my dragon hoard of battles to fight.

If I had a nickel for every battle in my lifetime I would be a billionaire, but I digress.

You might be thinking; “Look, Lost, if you can afford to travel all around the world would it seriously kill you to pay to use the toilet?” No, it would not. In an emergency I will use them and you should too. When you gotta go you gotta go!

That’s the problem. These paid bathrooms are in essence a shakedown. You can pay, walk away, or ruin your day. The philosophy behind my hatred of them is very simple:

Nobody should ever be put into the position of having to soil themselves because they don’t have money.

That’s it. That’s seriously, 100% it. Every living cell on the planet has a process by which they get rid of waste, but someone decided that the poor don’t have a right to it because they can’t be profited from. It’s disgusting.

Don’t get me wrong, I hate these bathrooms for numerous other reasons, but on the sole basis of their affront to human dignity they should have been made illegal decades ago.

I hear you, though. We aren’t all saints, and I’m certainly not one myself. So, if you will allow, let me bring a monetary argument into the equation.

I don’t think most of the money pay-toilets make goes into the maintenance of the bathroom, or towards paying cleaning staff, and you are therefore paying for literally nothing.

I haven’t spoken to any paid-toilet staff about their wages, nor have I riffled through any bathroom-business-owner’s accounting books so I have no hard proof to suggest that the above statement is true, but what I do have are the following personal experiences. They, and others have led me to believe that it is likely true for most pay-toilets I have encountered.

When I was in Germany with Forest we went to a restaurant and found that the bathroom inside was a donation toilet. I had assumed that it would be free for the patrons of the restaurant, so I had left my wallet with Forest. When I didn’t pay anything for the first visit the attendant looked a bit put out but said nothing. When I went in again later I brought a couple of coins with me, over and above the ‘asking price’ of my visits. It was my way of saying “Sorry for earlier, I didn’t know.” The attendant thanked me with a hug. Why hug someone for a few extra coins if you’re making a livable wage?

As for the maintenance of the bathroom, most free public washrooms are decent. Donation bathrooms can be a bit of a toss up, but the one in Germany was spotless. So how is it that every single pay-toilet I’ve ever had the misfortune of stepping into has been substandard at best? It’s unacceptable. They are always filthy, the hand driers only work on days starting with a T, the toilets may or may not flush, there’s never enough soap or paper towel, and the sinks run so cold that I half expect a clay penguin to pop out and start honking at me. Noot noot!

If I’m expected to contribute, then in turn I expect service delivery!

It never is though, and I find it so baffling that someone could decide to build a public washroom, make it immediately inaccessible to those who cannot be profited from, stock it with as few supplies as they could get away with, pay the staff who clean it the bare legal minimum, let it get to the point where it is barely sanitary or even functional, continue to demand that you pay over and above these expenses, then top it all off with a piece of propaganda saying that all of this is for your benefit.

The system simply doesn’t work.

There is good news, though, if only a little bit. While writing this I came across an initiative within the borough of Camden which pays businesses to let people use their bathrooms without purchasing goods or services. The best part is that businesses are finding that the people who use their washrooms freely are coming back as customers. I had also noticed upon the last couple of visits I made to King’s Cross that the change maker for the bathroom was out of order and so people were allowed to go in freely. It’s not a place I visited regularly, so I don’t know whether there was lack of willingness to repair the machine or a conscious effort to keep breaking it.

I’m sure there is some sort of legislation that could be passed to make pay-toilets illegal, but until such time, I have a little message to King’s Cross:

If that ‘out of order’ sign never gets taken down, I think we’d all be just fine with that.