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My first inclination was just to move on but you didn’t post on a throwaway so I will take the bait. Why do you think the toilet issue you described is a probl

My first inclination was just to move on but you didn’t post on a throwaway so I will take the bait. Why do you think the toilet issue you described is a problem that needs to be fixed? My experience in every corner of life in America to date has been separated bathrooms by sex and the men’s restroom containing far fewer sitting toilets. We all know this is because women sit for both natural duties and men, generally in the US at least, only sit for one. This is so basic I assume it’s not what you are talking about but please correct me if not so we can engage on that front. What I assume you mean is Google is 90% male and 10% female (no idea what it really is) and yet the bathrooms are 50% male and 50% female. You specifically mention sitting toilets which is what I am having trouble understanding the relevance of. Are men regularly forced to stand in line instead of being able to walk right in and go? If so that sounds like a facilities growth issue and not a sex imbalance issue. You could propose turning some female restrooms into male but generally restrooms are placed far enough apart from one another that there would have to be 0 females in the area serviced by those restrooms for that to work. The presence of even one would require facilities assigned to females or mixed gender restrooms (a different argument I fully support). That leaves your only other option as I see it for the female restrooms to be smaller than the male restrooms which is just ridiculous. No one would build the building with that hopefully temporary imbalance in mind and you can’t just repurpose half a bathroom as long as the sexes are being separated.

extropy 6y ago
I will bait too, as someone who has stood in line for male toilets in a Google office. In the office I was in there where generally 1 sitting and 2 standing seats per male toilet. The standing one are quick in / quick out and almost always free. But good luck finding vacant sitting spot after lunch. Edit: female restrooms generally had 3 sitting spots, so same size.
xiphias2 6y ago
> Why do you think the toilet issue you described is a problem that needs to be fixed? Because this way Google was effectively paying me loads of money to just go through 7 floors of bathrooms to find an empty one when I needed to use it. It's a waste of corporate resources to use a human resource's time like this. At the end the solution for me was just using the disabled toilet, as we didn't have disabled people on the floor at all. One solution would be to just build more sitting toilets instead of the standing ones, as those ones weren't used as much. But on 1 floor there were 2 bathrooms for women and 2 for men, so yes, repurposing some would have helped.
- WanderPanda 6y ago
  It‘s mind boggling that one needs to explain this (especially in a community like hn). Seems like literacy in basic economic principles was replaced by feelings in many people
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  Did you miss this part? "If so that sounds like a facilities growth issue and not a sex imbalance issue" To make this into a gender issue, you have to argue google can't afford toilets
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    Of course it’s a growth issue, Google can’t easily afford the prime real estate with the current housing prices. Load balancing is just a temporary measure that can be done. Google tear down meeting rooms to have more space for cranking more people in the same office. Luckily I was working there in the good old days mostly.
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      Are you seriously arguing that one of the largest and most profitable megacorps in the world can't afford enough toilets, so we'ce gotta take a toilet away from female employees? Profits aside, we do not consider stopping cramming people in an office, or hiring in a more agfordable location? What happened to common sence and self respect? This the literally shittiest, most submissive argument I've come across. If it weren't a civilised forum, i would've colled it bootlicking
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
amanaplanacanal 6y ago
I’m in favor of a more modern arrangement, where all restrooms are for a single person and can be used by anybody. It works well no matter what the gender ratio of the workforce is. Eventually we will all wonder why the heck we did it the old way.
- gowld 6y ago
  It's pretty obvious why -- people prefer to spend less money.
- omoikane 6y ago
  Some floors of certain buildings have that arrangement, but because single occupancy restrooms take up more floor space, there tend to be fewer of those, so the capacity might not work out as well as imagined. Personally I find it more helpful to adjust my biological clock to avoid doing my business at the same time as everyone else.

extropy 6y ago

I will bait too, as someone who has stood in line for male toilets in a Google office. In the office I was in there where generally 1 sitting and 2 standing seats per male toilet. The standing one are quick in / quick out and almost always free. But good luck finding vacant sitting spot after lunch. Edit: female restrooms generally had 3 sitting spots, so same size.

xiphias2 6y ago

> Why do you think the toilet issue you described is a problem that needs to be fixed? Because this way Google was effectively paying me loads of money to just go through 7 floors of bathrooms to find an empty one when I needed to use it. It's a waste of corporate resources to use a human resource's time like this. At the end the solution for me was just using the disabled toilet, as we didn't have disabled people on the floor at all. One solution would be to just build more sitting toilets instead of the standing ones, as those ones weren't used as much. But on 1 floor there were 2 bathrooms for women and 2 for men, so yes, repurposing some would have helped.

WanderPanda 6y ago
It‘s mind boggling that one needs to explain this (especially in a community like hn). Seems like literacy in basic economic principles was replaced by feelings in many people
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
Did you miss this part? "If so that sounds like a facilities growth issue and not a sex imbalance issue" To make this into a gender issue, you have to argue google can't afford toilets
- xiphias2 6y ago
  Of course it’s a growth issue, Google can’t easily afford the prime real estate with the current housing prices. Load balancing is just a temporary measure that can be done. Google tear down meeting rooms to have more space for cranking more people in the same office. Luckily I was working there in the good old days mostly.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    Are you seriously arguing that one of the largest and most profitable megacorps in the world can't afford enough toilets, so we'ce gotta take a toilet away from female employees? Profits aside, we do not consider stopping cramming people in an office, or hiring in a more agfordable location? What happened to common sence and self respect? This the literally shittiest, most submissive argument I've come across. If it weren't a civilised forum, i would've colled it bootlicking
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

amanaplanacanal 6y ago

I’m in favor of a more modern arrangement, where all restrooms are for a single person and can be used by anybody. It works well no matter what the gender ratio of the workforce is. Eventually we will all wonder why the heck we did it the old way.

gowld 6y ago
It's pretty obvious why -- people prefer to spend less money.
omoikane 6y ago
Some floors of certain buildings have that arrangement, but because single occupancy restrooms take up more floor space, there tend to be fewer of those, so the capacity might not work out as well as imagined. Personally I find it more helpful to adjust my biological clock to avoid doing my business at the same time as everyone else.