Ladies are Loo Losers ©

Ladies, I would like you to help me with some important research. Over the years, in various towns and cities in Australia (and perhaps in other countries), I've noticed a disturbing trend in shopping malls, movie theatres and other centres: I have found that women's toilets are almost always the furthest away.

Considering that women are the ones who tend to do more of the shopping, and often have to juggle children. Add those to the fact that women have to relieve their bladders more often than men, why is that in around 85% of cases, we have to walk further to reach the toilets than the other members of our society? Surely it would make more sense to put women's toilets closer.

When I began to consider this phenomenon, it dawned on me that a number of shopping malls and other centres have probably been designed by men, who consciously or unconsciously want to avenge themselves on the important women in their lives. They figure that when they add up all the extra seconds it takes for each woman to walk those further 30 steps to the toilet, it will somehow make up for all the time they've had to wait for their partner to get ready before heading out for the evening. Or I could just possibly be reading too much into this.

While shopping mall designers may get away with putting the ladies loos last, I've noticed that in places like bingo halls, the opposite is true. The women's toilets tend to be closer to the hall than the men's. I'm sure that when the owners were designing the lay-out of the new bingo hall, the thought of a crowd of busting ladies bearing down on them, waving their bingo pens and glaring angrily at them through their thick spectacles, would have been enough to make the management grow pale with fear.

And while we're on the subject don't you just hate toilet facilities:

•  where sinks and dryers are too far apart and you have to drip across the floor so you can dry your hands;
• when the toilet roll in the bottom of the holder has run out, and the top one locks into place and the paper won't roll off, so you have to dig around and tear off chunks of paper and somehow squash them into a useable pile;
•  those toilet roll holders that give you two sheets of paper at a time, and usually only flimsy paper;
• stalls that have bigs gaps in between the door and its frame, or doors that won't lock;
• dashing in and sitting down to find that the toilet seat is still warm from the previous occupant; and
• that there's no paper and you have to use the old scungy tissues from the bottom of your handbag.

So ladies, if you find women's toilets that are furthest away in any facilities, may I encourage you to submit a letter to the management to consider the situation and next time they're looking at revamping the facilities, to seriously contemplate putting the women's facilities first in line. Heck! Maybe you could consider writing a newspaper column or blog about it...someone I know did that once. ©