Do I need a key for the restroom? and other things that annoy

[Roland]

Tired of hearing this one. One of my jobs is in a convenience store.
The days of a locked restroom pretty much ended around the same
time as the full service stations went extinct.

"Do you want some ones? (Or change)

Why are you asking? It's what you plan to pay with either way.

" it's cheaper at..."

Well go there and buy it. I don't set the prices.

"I want to fill it up"

Then jump in to your time machine and travel back to a time
when gas stations were all post pay.

Not a repetitive saying, but I'll throw it in here. The unnecessarily
slow customers, that aren't ready, have no clue what they want
constantly add things at the end of their order after a pregnant
pause, or slowly and meticulously screw with their money. The
ones that wait in line, only to say they need to go get their wallet.
I could come up with more, but cashiers know what I mean with
all this various stuff.

The change parsing is really getting to me lately. I've mentioned it
before, but it seems like a lot of people have been fumbling around
looking for change for 30-45 seconds on top of what should have
been a quick transaction.... just so they don't get some danged
pennies.
Take your change, put it in a jar, and when it gets full take it to your
bank or to a coin star machine.

[icmedia]

I travel a LOT for work, and many of the gas stations I stop at (especially in sketchier neighborhoods) have a locked bathroom. I always check before asking, but I'd rather ask than keep waiting by a locked door thinking it was occupied.

[Terza]

We don't have a locked toilet, however, currently it's technically out of order and has been for some 4 or 5 weeks.

The reason? The light doesn't work. We've been asking since the day it first went for someone to come fix it, which has to be organised by Head Office, and well, you all know how well Head Office works!
In addition, about 3 days after the customer toilet light went, so did the staff toilet light!

I love my immediate manager, but I could cheerfully kill our area manager sometimes!

[wordgirl]

I can see the "it's cheaper at ..." and "I want to fill it up..." being really annoying, as well as the slow-pokers. (I was behind a lady this morning who was meticulously browsing all the scratch-off tickets on offer, requesting one particular ticket, then re-examining them with the same absorption as before as if they may have changed in the 2 seconds before identifying her next pick - she bought 10 tickets this way.)

I'd assume the "do you need ones (or change)" people are just trying to be considerate, though. I ask this when I'm trying to figure out whether it's a problem that I pay with a $20 rather than assembling something closer to exact change. As for digging out pennies, yeah, I do that too. I don't like pennies, and like cats, the pennies seem to know this and are always sneaking up to me. My change is in a coin purse, though, and all my handbags are small - I won't stand there for 30 seconds looking for a penny.

[notalwaysright]

Omg, the bathroom question! Our store has a single unisex bathroom. I don't know about gas stations, but big stores have not (in my lifetime or memory) used a key for the bathroom. The employee break room is across the hall from the customer bathroom, so I swear there's always some sad looking person milling around in the hallway. They see me and have to ambush me with the key question.

"No, you don't need a key. If the bathroom is locked then someone is using it."

I need to print this on cards and hand them out. Because I just want to get into that magical break room with a door that locks, that customers can't bother me in. The previous break room door was always left ajar, and customers would poke their heads in and say "I know you're on break, but..." And whoever was on break would have some major eye twitching as they resisted the urge to scream go away.

Oh, I do remember some gas stations that needed keys, but I feel like there was a sign or something? And those places were kinda out in the middle of nowhere places, if I recall, the kind that had the key on key-ring that floated.

[Aria]

Locked bathrooms are common in convenience stores, where I live. I handle this by taking a look at the bathroom door and if it's got a place to put a key, I assume I need one. Haven't been wrong yet.

[Sparklyturtle]

Ah, Small Town America! I guess it depends on where you are, but I was in eastern Washington state, passing through a town of less than 5,000, looking desperately for a bathroom. I found a station with a bathroom, and once finished there went into the station and bought some snack items (I've never felt right using a business' bathroom without patronizing the business.) The gentleman running the register, who was the owner, told me that I could stop by any time to use his restroom, and if he wasn't open the restroom at the park on the other side of town was never locked. This was in the middle of farming country where people didn't go unless they had a reason; I was visiting a relative in an even smaller town about 15 miles further down the highway, which I told him, so apparently that made me practically family. My late aunt's town was even smaller, about 2500 people, and the gas station at the edge of town wasn't manned. That is, if you wanted to pay with cash you had to go pay at the grocery store, which was less than half a block away, but if you wanted to pay with a credit card you could just slide your card into the pump and pump away. Something like this would really only work in the small farming towns in eastern Washington. The closest sizeable burg was around 40 miles away in Idaho, but even this town wasn't that large, around 45,000 people.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Lol, we don't have a public toilet where I work, and there's zero indication that there is one. Doesn't stop customers from constantly asking, "Do you have a toilet?" It's easier to reply, "Nope," than it is to explain that we have a staff loo but they can't use it. XD We prefer not to be shouted at.

[MoonCat]

This was in the middle of farming country where people didn't go unless they had a reason;

Well, considering we're talking about restrooms here, I assume they had a reason....


Sorry, couldn't resist!

[dalesys]

... I assume they had a reason....

No Sher, Sheeplock!

[KellyHabersham]

Locked bathrooms are common in convenience stores, where I live. I handle this by taking a look at the bathroom door and if it's got a place to put a key, I assume I need one. Haven't been wrong yet.

They're common in my area too, but it depends on the individual store. Using Circle K as an example......the smaller stores are more likely to have the locked bathrooms than the larger stores.

[Lace Neil Singer]

A McDonalds near me had to lock the disabled loo/baby changing on the ground floor due to drug addicts using it to do their thing. O_o

[wordgirl]

A McDonalds near me had to lock the disabled loo/baby changing on the ground floor due to drug addicts using it to do their thing. O_o

In many newly constructed commercial/public spaces in the U.S., they're installing "family restrooms" (in addition to the multi-stall male/female restrooms). As someone who sometimes travels with little kids, they are AWESOME. But I just recently saw a wire story about how they are already seeing a sharp increase in problems there.

One airport director said they have already had a few instances where a person or group of people basically turned a family restroom (which are generally at least 7'x7', often larger, with a bigger sink and changing table) into an impromptu hotel room for long layovers. And yeah, all the activities that typically go on in a hotel room are going on in there.

[Nashida]

One of my favorite nerdy comic/gaming shops has a locked bathroom, and if you ask for the key they give it to you clipped to an NES cart so there's no way you'd lose it.

Quite a few gas stations/convenience stores have locked bathrooms, if they even have them at all. I've been caught off guard a handful of times driving to Maine, stopping for gas and realizing I can't download while the car uploads.

[wolfie]

What I don't understand are service plazas on controlled-access highways where one of the fast food places (usually "Chez Ronald") has a drive-through. If you've been on the road long enough to need to stop to eat, you usually need to do something else as well - something that can't be done at the drive-through.