I had to visit my country's consulate in Manchester couple months ago in the middle of lockdown, and in city centre there was NOWHERE to pee. Zero. I went literally from business to business begging to use their facilities and nope, due to covid customers are not allowed in. Nope nope and nope. Went through several places and ended up going in some back alley. Absolutely ridiculous and I have no idea how people manage day to day.

A (nice) hotel I stayed at recently marked their lobby restrooms as closed, even to customers. It get odd as the hotel wasn’t somewhere you’d walk to, so it would be paying customers anyways

Could be taxi or ride share drivers or food delivery drivers. I know of one taxi driver that was reported to police for the mess he left the hotels’ bathrooms.

Personally I just buy the cheapest things possible, 2$ coffee or drink and no one complains - it sucks and shouldn’t be this way but it’s how I deal

You misunderstood - I couldn't use the toilets even if I bought something. Due to covid customers are not allowed to use the bathrooms, full stop. I was perfectly happy to buy a coffee from Starbucks to use their toilet but was told no, their toilets are only for staff due to the pandemic.

people should start peeing on the streets

Make the problem big enough that govt gets back to doing it's job (which is duty of care for the citizens)

You can start by example, I might join after laws are changed, especially the one that if you are unfortunate, you can end up being labeled a sex offender for taking a leak.

Not a crime in the UK fortunately.

It should be. A lot of men are opportunistic in this way, can't tell you how many times I've seen men doing this intentionally to kids, women, etc.

My wife has it happen like once a month at least... Keep your dick in your pants around me or I'll hack it off.

What does this have to do with peeing? Peeing outside isn't a crime. Intentional nudity meant to surprise someone can still be sexual assault, these two are not mutually exclusive.

>>My wife has it happen like once a month at least

Where the hell do you live??

hint: USA

I'm in Asia, in a place with no laws. I won't beat a native person to death for this kind of thing, but if you're "peeing" in front of children, which I have seen multiple times from foreigners here, then get ready. If you're in a city, keep your fucking dick in your pants, just in case your around somebody like me that is shell shocked by too many experiences witnessing pathetic attempts at sexual assault, both "visual" and physical.

And what exactly does this have to do with peeing criminality or lack of it in the UK?

In the US many businesses are required to have bathrooms but they can and do make them for customers only. That combined with a lack of public bathrooms (not just a lack - they effectively do not exist here) leaves many workers with no other option.

"In 1969, California Assemblywoman March Fong Eu smashed a porcelain toilet with an axe in front of the California state capitol, protesting the misogyny of restrooms that charged entrance fees for stalls but not urinals. She was not alone in her frustration. The grassroots organization CEPTIA—the Committee to End Pay Toilets in America—mobilized against pay toilets, putting out a quarterly newsletter (the Free Toilet Paper) and exchanging warring pamphlets with Nik-O-Lok, the leading pay-toilet manufacturer. The group won a citywide ordinance banning pay toilets in Chicago in 1973, followed by bans in Alaska, California, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, and Wyoming." -- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-19/why-the-u...

If the government makes it illegal to profit from providing a good or service, fewer people will provide that good or service.

> but they can and do make them for customers only.

Starbucks doesn't anymore after the PR incident couple of years ago. There are 15k Starbucks in USA.

That about 1 Starbuck for every 600km², hardly a replacement for public bathrooms.

of course the vast majority of the US is open land, still, far from any Starbucks or humans, so the distribution of Starbucks places them close to humans for some huge percentile of humans at any given point in time in the US, by design of course.

Sure. How many public restrooms do you think USA should have?

More than Starbucks alone can or should be forced to provide. Where that number lies I'm not entirely sure, but I imagine interstate commerce and population densities would be a pretty good starting point.

1% of the population, so around 3 million, would be a good starting point.

That isn’t the Amazon driver problem. Their issue is that the drivers get a nearly inhuman work quota with automated enforcement and no recourse. UPS drivers work their butts off, but don’t get fired for taking a dump.

End of the day, it’s bad management on Amazon’s part. They’ve built out a distribution network very quickly, but being dependent on desperation on the part of a miserable workforce has pretty obvious drawbacks.

Even in central London when I've worked for many years I've had situations where me and my 2 year old son were asked to leave an establishment right after I stated we have a bathroom emergency and I just need 3 minutes to deal with it.

TBH I don't blame private businesses. It's not like they are obligated to share their facilities with non-paying customers. It's just a shame London became like that.

There is a scheme where a private business can open their bathroom to the public, put a sign in the window saying "Our toilets are open to all", and get paid a bit by government to contribute to maintanance.

Seems like a good deal all round, considering many businesses need to have toilets for staff and customers already. The sign makes them look like good citizens, the additional maintenance is probably very small, and some of the people who come in to use the toilet will buy something, so it acts like advertising too.

I don't know why everywhere doesn't do it.

They don’t do it for the usual reasons: people with terrible and unhygienic habits, vandalism, drug consumption, smelly homeless, etc etc. I remember public toilets in the ‘80s, when heroin and smoking were more of a thing: everything was half-burnt, constantly. It’s the usual tragedy of the commons, or “why we can’t have nice things”.

> I don't know why everywhere doesn't do it.

The cost of dealing with the kinds of messes that happen in public toilets is exorbitant.

If you want more and more people to checkout of consumerism, removing public restrooms is a great start. It doesn't directly effect me so much (I'm apparently part camel) but indirectly, some loved ones I've traveled with need to use the restroom frequently and as the logistics person usually having to find solutions for everyone, I can tell you it drives me insane how difficult it is to find restrooms sometimes. There are areas I flat I refuse to go with others just because I'm not going to spend half my day running around in search for a restroom, nor do I want to feel inclined to buy a cup of coffee or whatever every single time someone needs to urinate. If I'm going to one specific place and I know there's restrooms that's fine but we tend to roam around. That's good for your business. The less inclined I am to roam, the less likely you'll ever see any money from me.

I'd rather just say "hey, let's do a family and friends get together and screw going out anywhere... come to my house, all the restrooms you can use here and no taxes or other non-sense!" There's probably $500-1k+ of revenue that local businesses didn't get that evening, but hey, it's better for my friends and family, we can save and invest that and be more comfortable.

For governments it doesn't matter, they can just shift taxes to where it needs to be. For businesses, it can seriously hurt your bottom line. I can't imagine operating a restroom is so costly to offset the lost customers that it's worth cutting off so many potential patrons, but maybe I'm wrong or maybe people will continue throwing their money in areas that aren't consumer friendly. It won't be me though. Also I'm not that old, the more elderly who tend to have more disposable income from wealth accumulation are also people who often have less ability to wait to use restrooms. They seem like another market to consider.

Mostly governments resolve it without needing to subsidise toilet use by requiring licensed premises or anywhere serving food and drink to have toilets

People throw all kinds of garbage into toilets and fixing them becomes a weekly chore.

Anyway, if people can start a successful business around overpriced coffee, then I'm curious if it's possible to start a profitable chain of public restrooms.

Toilet paper theft is concern too

I remember visiting newly fitted library in Pimlico,London. There was a huge sign on the toilet door saying you need to ask for toilet paper at the admin desk. So I go to the desk and ask for it, obviously curious to know why such policy exist to start with. They did tell they couldn't keep up with the thefts of toilet paper and couldn't buy it fast enough. This is one of the reasons a lot of nice and useful things can't existing for public, because a few idiots ruin it all for others.

Why is toilet paper need to be stole? Maybe if cizitens had basic needs met they would not need to steal TP?

I almost 100% sure it's not those in the greatest need who keep stealing it. It's just a category of people,who treat anything that isn't theirs as crap. It's the same people who steal all the towels,soap bars and what not from the hotel room, because,you know, they paid a lot for it. Or like in my own town,where the shoplifters are often teachers and medics- hardly the first category that come to your mind.

I wonder if there is some way we could make it open for the public minus the couple idiots who run it for the rest of us.

I don't really want to make it like Chinas social credit score, more like you do these bad things and we take your good person card.

Being able to pee anywhere is the one app that is missing from my iPhone.

OpenStreetMap contains data on businesses and which of them have a toilet. You can see this detail on apps like OSMAnd. If you really need to pee, petrol stations are among the businesses least likely to challenge someone for using the toilet without buying anything.

That's a good idea, I wonder whether such apps exist.

Just wanted to point out that you _are_ able to pee anywhere, you might not be allowed to, though.

I was blown away when I visited Brussels and there were street urinals like [0] scattered around city.

Now in London, and whenever I see men urinating on trees I cannot help but think "put the fricking urinals on the streets"

[0] https://www.travelblog.org/Photos/642355