Don’t Prop the Toilet Door Open!

The Four Key Reasons You Shouldn’t Prop the Door Open

We know the feeling, you’ve been caught short when you’re out for a picnic or wandering around the shops, and when you come out of the loo there’s a long line of people behind you. So, you decide to be charitable, you hold the door open for the next person, they hold it open for the person after them, and before you know it, someone’s found a rock to prop open the door and the public toilet in your local town is free for the day!

I’m here to explain why we shouldn’t do this. Now I know you’re thinking “of course you would say that, you’re the company that makes us pay for the loo!” but propping open the door is damaging to you, your local council and your local community. I’ve broken it down to four key reasons why we shouldn’t prop the door open.

Cleaning!

We know that there is nothing more annoying than finding a public toilet in a horrible state. Unfortunately, the toilet is only ever as clean as the last person that used it! There are some individuals in the world who will pay just to go inside and ruin it for everyone else. However, most of us pay our money, do our business and leave. If you prop the door open, anyone can get in and wreck the toilet without regard for anyone else.

Cleaning (part 2)!

When you pay your money and open the door, you are counted as one person using the toilet. Some of our toilets use this information to schedule the visits of cleaning teams. By propping the door open this information is misleading and leads to the toilet receiving less cleaning than it should. This of course means a less pleasant experience for those who use the facility.

More toilets!

The more people that pay to pee, the more awareness there is of the demand. This leads to greater resources available to your local council to fund more facilities. Councils have a really tough time balancing budgets and finding ways to distribute funds to potentially non-vital services. Fee paying customers contribute to the running costs of facilities and help keep public toilets open. This means they are higher on the Council agenda than they would otherwise be.

Negative usage…

We know that public toilets are infamous for their various uses outside of relieving oneself, there are even a few songs which have been written about that! Propping the door open makes it even more likely that toilets will be used for things we would really prefer them not to be. Drug use and anti-social behaviour generally becomes more prevalent where this is the case.

I’d love to think that my blog has convinced everyone to avoid propping a public toilet door open again, but I know that’s very unlikely. Instead I will hope that this has given some insight as to why local councils charge for public toilets, and why we recommend that for your own sake as well as ours, you don’t prop open the toilet door. It will make using public toilets a more pleasant experience for everyone!