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Bathroom Line Etiquette
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Anonymous
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I was at an orchard over the weekend where there was one bathroom (2nd was out of order) and a few port-a-potties about 20 feet away from the main building. I was in line with my 2-year old (currently potty training) and 6 year old. A woman (maybe 50s) was behind us and kept talking about how she had to go and it was an emergency. The woman behind us let her in front of her, but I did not (my potty training two year old kept saying she had to go potty, as did my 6 year old). They (the kids) weren't making a big scene, but I knew they had to go. As we were waiting, the woman with the emergency kept talking to me about how badly she had to go. I said, I understand, so do my kids, but she wouldn't let it rest. She pointed out that my two-year-old could go in a diaper, I said she was potty training, but it seemed to lay on deaf ears. I did point out that there were port-a-potties a stones throw away with no line and she made a face. The solo bathroom opened, the three of us went in (me plus 2 kids) and we went as fast as we could. Was I wrong to not let the woman in front of me? Yes, technically my daughter could have gone in her diaper, but we're really trying to encourage potty-training. If it was a true emergency, the woman could have feasibly gone to the port-a-potty.
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Anonymous
| This is when somebody (the child, the adult) just goes into the bushes to pee. |
Anonymous
| I would have let the woman in ahead of me. |
Anonymous
| Unless there's a disability, an adult needs to manage themselves so that they can stand in a bathroom line. And if she couldn't, she could use the port a potty. I'm with you, OP. |
Anonymous
| An adult who's desperate enough to make this kind of scene would deserve to go to the head of the line IMO. Nobody wants to be that person, so it must have been serious. |
Anonymous
| The woman could have had diarrhea. Having kids doesn’t trump everything. Yes, you were wrong not to let her go in ahead of you. |
Anonymous
My thought, too. This is not a common occurrence. I would have assumed IBS or some sort of other digestive issue and let her go ahead. |
Anonymous
An adult that desperate would also use a port-a-potty though, especially if there are 20 and you could check to find a less awful one. |
Anonymous
| You were not wrong in any way to do what you did but you know that you could have been gracious and let the grandma go ahead of you. Etiquette is looking past your own interests to the interest of others. You followed the rules (you were in line first...) but you were not gracious. Be gracious next time and see what happens with your kids (maybe they hold their pee, maybe they don't but either way, they will learn a valuable lesson). |
Anonymous
Sometimes they don't have tp and she may have really needed that. |
Anonymous
| Between a 50 year old woman wetting her pants and a toddler wetting pants, the woman gets to go first. No contest. This isn't hard. You have had children, so I guarantee this will be you someday. |
Anonymous
I agree with this. For the potting training toddler, it's annoying, but you guys will come out fine. For an adult, it's an embarrassing emergency. You should have let the adult go ahead, OP. |
Anonymous
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That’s a tough one. If your 2-year-old was in a pull-up and wasn’t asking to go potty right then, I probably would have let the woman go ahead of us. But if the little one was about to have an accident, I wouldn’t have.
I assume the woman behind you made it to the bathroom in time, so I wouldn’t worry about it anymore. |
Anonymous
she couldn't have known that if she didn't check though. If OP had said that the woman checked the port-a-pottys and said there was no tp and she was having an emergency then that would be one thing, but you are assuming, at OPs expense, that there were more mitigating circumstances than the woman really had to pee and just thought that port-a-pottys were too gross so she should get to go ahead of OP. As long as we're making assumptions though, I've never known a 50 something woman to not have a supply of tissues in her purse, which can be used as a stand in for tp. Heck, I'm in my 30s and I've always got tissues, and so does my mother. |
Anonymous
I'm 48 and don't carry tissues. Maybe the woman checked the portapotties previously? Maybe she was worried about losing her place in line if she checked? Maybe she was just a jerk and there was no emergency at all. We don't know. We just don't know. What we DO know is that it is very rare for a woman to make a scene like that, so I would have given her the benefit of the doubt and let her go in front of me. |