On the Job - Toilet Etiquette
I managed to attend the Friday information meeting in my second week in Beijing. The topics seemed normal (at first): introductions, announcements, updates and a health presentation by our Health and Safety Czar. The title of the health presentation was (I swear I am not making this up): Toilet Etiquette - Sit or Squat?
The next half-hour was filled with a discussion of the different types of toilets you would find around the world and the normal procedure for using them. I am sorry to say that I actually learned something within the first five minutes. Both China and Japan have squat toilets but there is a subtle difference. In Japan, the user walks directly into the toilet and squats down (meaning, their back is to the door). Most of the rest of the world has the user turn around so that they are facing the door when they squat. The toilets actually have a slightly different construction to indicate this. Trust me, we had pictures and diagrams. The fact that I learned something in this presentation is very disturbing to me.
The presentation continued on with sit-style toilets and how to use them. There was then a segment of the presentation that I couldn't understand but it involved a picture of a man and woman sitting on a sit-style toilet in adjoining stalls and some graphic indicating that the man was trying to look at the woman. I don't know... I couldn't parse the english in this part of the presentation.
I didn't have the heart to complicate the presentation with the Indian sit/squat hybrid toilets. These are sit toilets that have "flanges" (or wings) that allow a person to choose to sit or squat. I felt the presentation was technical enough already.
At the end of the presentation, the presenter told us why he had put together this presentation,"It seems that someone, probably from the outside, used on of our western toilets as a squat toilet." I am dying to know what evidence he had. The only thing I can come up with are actual boot prints on the toilet seat.
The next half-hour was filled with a discussion of the different types of toilets you would find around the world and the normal procedure for using them. I am sorry to say that I actually learned something within the first five minutes. Both China and Japan have squat toilets but there is a subtle difference. In Japan, the user walks directly into the toilet and squats down (meaning, their back is to the door). Most of the rest of the world has the user turn around so that they are facing the door when they squat. The toilets actually have a slightly different construction to indicate this. Trust me, we had pictures and diagrams. The fact that I learned something in this presentation is very disturbing to me.
The presentation continued on with sit-style toilets and how to use them. There was then a segment of the presentation that I couldn't understand but it involved a picture of a man and woman sitting on a sit-style toilet in adjoining stalls and some graphic indicating that the man was trying to look at the woman. I don't know... I couldn't parse the english in this part of the presentation.
I didn't have the heart to complicate the presentation with the Indian sit/squat hybrid toilets. These are sit toilets that have "flanges" (or wings) that allow a person to choose to sit or squat. I felt the presentation was technical enough already.
At the end of the presentation, the presenter told us why he had put together this presentation,"It seems that someone, probably from the outside, used on of our western toilets as a squat toilet." I am dying to know what evidence he had. The only thing I can come up with are actual boot prints on the toilet seat.
posted by agoel at
7:09 PM
3 Comments:
As I understand it, a large fraction of American women treat all public toilets as squat toilets. LD calls this usage "the hover". Of course, once the first woman hovers, so must all the rest, until next time the toilet seat is cleaned, so it's a kind of self-perpetuating behavior.
Frankly, I think everyone should spend a few weeks driving around America and camping, to permanently remove their squeamishness about public toilets.
And I am dying to have some examples of the graphics you were showed...
Ah, yes. The "hover". It comes in quite handy in those bathrooms you're not quite sure has been washed in the last 50 years. Okay, I'm exaggerating - the last decade. However, some people don't care about those things, so it is actually proper female ettiquette to clean up after yourself. Because really, if you can't clean up your own pee, who else really wants to?
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