Nasty!

I had a taste of home when I was in Chicago for Thanksgiving.

A day or so before Thanksgiving Day I visited Dominicks on Roosevelt Road. I had to use the bathroom and there was someone already in the toilet. He left the door to the toilet open and being polite I didn't really look too hard in there. So I basically have no idea whether or not he was doing the no.1 or the no. 2.

To be sure and this may not be proper etiquette, but I'll give me two cents anyway. If all your doing is urinating in the toilet there shouldn't be a problem if you leave the door open. No one is likely to see you urinate and your back will be turned to me. If you're taking a serious dump that is nasty in the worse possible way and I do think that at some point someone did walk in on him as he did his business.

We as if this man wasn't nasty enough when I finally was through in the bathroom all he did was walk out of the bathroom without washing his hands. Again probably not proper etiquette, but I don't necessarily begrudge those who choose not to wash their hands. I wash my hands every time I use the bathroom or at least use hand sanitizer, but to take a dumb while leaving the stall door open and then walking out without washing your hands just makes a person who does that look even nastier.

There are those who simply don't care, they just go on automatic pilot when then they do what they do. That's how some people are they have no qualms about not doing the polite thing. He might be the type that was never socialized into closing the door behind him especially in a public bathroom or even socialized into washing his hands when he's done his business. As a result this is a man who might act like he is at home, by leaving his bathroom door open and then not washing his hands when he is thru.

Of course I can only imagine who else who do this, ex-cons. This came to mind when I thought about this. I remember that I was on the train to Dallas, Texas one time and when we rode thru Texarkana we saw the yard of a jail. There was a toilet right in the courtyard of this jail amongst other things (for some reason I seem to remember there being weight benches and maybe a basketball court). In any case this toilet offer some semblance of privacy if I recall correctly but not much.

There was like a wall around the toilet, but no door to close. See if you're an inmate you don't have many rights let alone privacy. There might be an expectation that you're up to something especially in the toilet in jail. So correctional officers might be someone to watch everyone's moves. That of course is true perhaps if you watch too much OZ or indeed read up on any news about what's going on in America's correctional facilities.

Now you may want to know how this relates to my brief anecdote. I started thinking that this man may have found himself in jail once upon a time. Perhaps he's gotten so used to lack of privacy he probably don't think that it might be important to close the door behind him when he uses a public toilet.

Of course I can't say for him not washing his hands. I'm sure there are reason why some of us out there might choose to leave the washroom without washing the hands. However it would be nice if some of us out there would take a few seconds to put soap and water to our hands to clean them up a little. Let's not be like this man I ran into at a Dominick's store before the Thanksgiving holiday.