It is hard to think straight when pressed for a poop. It also depends on how long you’ve held the urge for a number two. Let’s assume you’re training for a marathon and go out for your Saturday long runs. Your marathon is a few weeks away and you’re determined to register a distance of about 30km. This will instil much-needed confidence in your drive towards a personal best. You feel great after 8 hours of sleep. Your running backpack is equipped with all the necessary energy gels, protein bar and fluid. Headset and music player are all on a good state for this run. Within the first 5 kilometres, everything seems fine. After the 10 kilometre mark, you suddenly feel some unsteadiness in your stomach and the urge to use the toilet becomes stronger.
It’s a feeling you could easily brush for a few minutes but not for an hour or two. What is left of your long run is about 20 kilometres and you expect to complete the distance in 2 hours. The thought of an accident races through your mind but you shrug it off and reduce your pace to ensure the bowels are tamed. Your options to use a public toilet is limited as there are no shopping malls, train stations or restaurants nearby. You suddenly realise there are a few meters away and you summon the courage to ask permission to use their facility. You dash to the toilet and sit to empty your bowel in little or no time. Within a few minutes, someone pushes your door open and you suddenly realise the door was unlocked.
Reasons why you may fail to lock the public toilet
1) An overwhelming urge to use the toilet: One could be so pressed that nothing else matters. Developing a tunnel vision to use the toilet can make you go blind to everything else including enabling the locks.
2) Using the public toilet for the first time: By default, we activate the locks of toilets before conducting our business. If it’s a toilet we’ve never used, we may be oblivious of how things function.
3) A complex and impractical lock: Some locks are so confusing that you’ll think you’ve enabled them only to find out something else needs to be done to ensure complete lock. Locks used for portable toilets and fixed public toilets should be intuitive and possibly have ‘occupied’ and ’empty’ indicator of some sought.
4) Impact of jetlag: travelling long haul across time zones could lead to jetlag. When one is suffering from jetlag there is a high tendency to be confused and lack concentration. In your head, you believe the toilet lock was enabled but in reality, it isn’t.
5) Lack of focus and forgetfulness: Certain people are quite forgetful and carefree. These individuals can easily fail to enable a public toilet lock when doing a number one or two.
6) Transfer of habit: Having a habit of using your private toilets without an enabled lock could lead to exhibiting the same habit when using public facilities.
Image credit: The Conversation
