memes

No its not a profit saving thing. It makes no difference cost wise to save a few cms of wood. Its intentionally designed that way. Go to any other capitalist country than America and you won't see gaps.

I have doubts about the IV drug users. It would imply that bathroom stalls used to give privacy before IV drugs were a thing, and after indoor plumbing.

I suspect the posted "cheapness" posted elsewhere, or so managers can check who is "slacking off". (Also so pervs can spy.)

I think it's because bathrooms are cost, and so they got enshitified early to discourage costumers from using them.

It's because of the puritanical shame- without those gaps, people might (gasp) have sex in bathroom stalls instead of doing their business as god intended.

No man, you don't get it, I was told that a foot is much better, because that's 12 inches and then 12 can be easily divided by 2,3,4,6

As if you couldn't just work with wood sizes of 12 or 24cms....

All you need to know is that toilet stalls in the USA (and Canada) have huge gaps around the doors, unlike other countries. You have to carefully position your head so you're not making accidental eye contact with people outside, and somehow relax knowing everyone can see you taking a shit.

This is a typical public restroom

https://imgur.com/a/SVtDTpu

Really? That's what I'd expect even in a run-down public toilet in a train station over here in Austria.

It always baffles me that this is considered a luxury in the USA while in Germany (and I assume most of Europe) this is the absolute standard. Stalls where the door doesn't lock properly or where the indicator on the outside is faded so that you can't reliably determine if it's occupied are already considered signs of bad maintenance. Gaps that you can look through without pressing your face right against them would be a "nope, I'll never visit this place again" level scandal.

I am so jealous. My old work had stalls with gaps. The whole room was a bit tight, so you couldn't just back up far enough to see the feet of the person in the stall. The locks were installed in such a way that if you pulled the door a little, it would open. (So a discreet soft pull on the door was not a good way of determining occupancy.)

The only way to know was to look in the gap.

I was about to go in a stall when I made eye contact with the current occupant of said stall. She just yelled out "YOU CREEPIN?"

I am of course not socially awkward at all and was completely normal when I replied back "no... Sorry."

Actual privacy in a multi-stall bathroom would be so nice.

I’ve always believed that the whole stall concept was developed by some kind of pervert.

I mean, even when they grant proper visual privacy, that’s just one of our five senses. You can still hear and smell what’s going on next door - and I swear in some cases just about taste it.

To me, “privacy” means all senses.

Not to mention having weirdos peek over the top of the stall, which has happened.

Yeah, being literally as cheap as possible is the main design driver for poop stalls with large gaps. Very forgiving installation, so the cheapest possible labor can put them in to inconsistently built bathrooms with cheap parts using the least amount of materials on the cheapest hinges with the cheapest paint and cheap replacement parts when whatever is in there fails.

Also cheap to repair when it breaks.

Also, some amount of gap at the floor level means the whole room can be sloped down to a single drain when a toilet backs up instead of being contained in a single stall. That is also cheaper.

Eventually, enshittification will hit public restrooms hard and we won't even have dividers at all. Just a single, giant hole in the floor everyone is expected to pee and shit into while a bank of CCTV cameras watches every angle of the room.

"Wanna help me wipe bud? This one is particularly sticky, I need to eat some more beans"

So the non-private pooing is actually continuous with American moral puritanism. That makes sense.

I feel like you don't need that much intimacy when pissing but maybe that's just me.

they explains why everyone in Europe is dead by suffocating in public toilets.

As someone from Europe I can guarantee you that 5-10cm (2-4") at the bottom and 30cm (12") at the top with almost no gap between the door and wall are by far enough to not suffocate. Maybe put a vent in the ceiling for good measure.

More like:

”I don't actually care because I never use a public bathroom, as long as my health allows, just as the building owners intended."