That doesn't answer the question about the vertical gap between the doors (more invasive in my opinion). I've seen totally normal white collar office buildings with large gaps which the workers have covered with toilet paper, fabric, cardboard, etc. The makeshift seal was there for months (still there when I left the company).

Why is this a solution that needs jerry-rigged solutions instead of a normal solution like everywhere else in an office building?

Is it just me or are these gaps getting larger? I travel to the US a couple of times a year for 15 years and it seems that way to me.

It's disturbing that the probability is quite high that whilst searching for a vacant cubicle, your eyes may well lock with the single enlarged eye of a terrified pooper. This is not a bond I want to make.

"This is not a bond I want to make."

Once made, it's unbreakable though.

Yeah I never understood it either, it's very simple to have the components overlap. You don't need to worry about additional parts or tolerances or anything like that. Everything stays the same but the arrangement changes.

Panel gaps are just a feature of installation and manufacturing irregularities. You’re often drilling into concrete and people just don’t know what they’re doing. Better too loose (big gap) than too tight (door doesn’t close, need to re-drill the holes) is the thinking.

You can install the doors properly with no gap, but it requires everything be square and plumb and all that. And then not get damaged.

Why is this gap standard in America and basically absent in europe? It's not like these concerns are US-exclusive.

Europe tends to like good standards.

Americans tend to question them and then do whatever they want to do.

Europe also tends to cultivate a village mentality where people trust each other to follow decorum.

America tends to operate as if vaguely hostile strangers are rolling through town all the time.

The gap is there so you can look in and see if anyone's in there before walking in and sitting on the pooper's lap.

Someone should invent a mechanism that "locks" the door in place from the inside so that this can't happen.

What if... This is crazy, but what if the lock also exposed different colour so a locked one is red, but an unlocked one is green? ;)

What a preposterous and illogical suggestion.

You can have that with more privacy than the average US toilet.

This still has the same cleaning advantage: http://www.ironwood-mfg.com/Pictures/Full%20Size/European1.j...

But I see this way more often in the US: https://globalpartitions.com/wp-content/uploads/ASI-SolidPla...

The huge gap under the door looks like it might be to discourage people from having sex in the cubicles. However, I'm not sure why that would be more of a worry in the USA than elsewhere.

Where I work you can easily tell the occupied stalls from the presence of people's feet at the bottom. Except for the ADA stall. You have to glance at it through the mirror as you enter the bathroom to get the right angle to determine if occupied. All full? Turn around and try another floor.