What do you think about when you go to the toilet? When I’m at work, I try to work out the statistical possibility of someone being in the toilet with me.
There are 160 people at my work, with a 50/50 male-female split.
There are 2 male bathrooms (each containing 3 urinals and 3 bowls) for the three floors, which I estimate are used equally over the 8 hours of the working day.
Given that the average healthy male micturates 2 to 4 times per working day, you have an average of 120 urinations per bathroom per day.
Divide the 480 minutes of the working day by 120 and that equals 1 wee every 4 minutes. Given that the average piss takes 1 minute to perform (including washing the hands), There is a 1/4 chance of encountering another worker when you go to the toilet.
Of course, this doesn’t take into account other activities liking pooing or people who take a long time to wash and dry their hands, which could well bring it up to 1/3, but it seems heuristically accurate to me.
Some people find going to the toilet when others are around uncomfortable. I suppose their mind is thinking — do I enjoy this? No, therefore I must hate it. It’s as though they have to make a decision and, given that the toilet is the only place in some houses where you can get privacy, it is not surprising that people get edgy.
Personally, I find all such bodily activities faintly absurd. The idea of a group of hominids wearing trousers all lining up to a wall with a bowl attached to, with their willies hanging out, engaging in the excretion of waste water is bizarre. It’s like a chimp in a bikini or a chimp drinking tea from bone china — eerie but amusing.
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