So I thought I’d just scratch out a nice, quick black and white comic today, but apparently I can’t leave well enough alone.
Stay safe and have a fun weekend! Regular storyline returns on Monday.
New Year’s Special – Workplace Restroom Etiquette
Transcript
Nate: Consider these guidelines for workplace restroom behavior when pondering your New Year’s Resolutions for 2011.
Narrarator: If you leave the restroom without washing your hands, I may not say anything to you, but in my mind you will forever be associated with piss-hands.
Narrarator: I’ll be like, “There goes Piss Hands Jeff.”
Narrarator: Given any other possible choice, DO NOT use the middle stall. Being 15 inches away from you while you’re squeezing out a massive Yule Log was not on my list of goals for today.
Narrarator: If we’re standing at the urinals, even if we’re pals, even if we’re best fucking buddies, I do NOT want to talk to you.
Narrarator: Whatever you have to say, it’s not so important that it can’t wait until a time when I’m not standing there with my dick in my hand.
Oh God, that always annoys me when someone wants to talk to me while I’m in the toilet.
Strangely enough, I always carry a book with me when I use a public stall. No one tries to strike up a conversation then.
Too bad, because if they did, I’ve already got my come-back line:
“Ssh, this is the good part!”
Ugh. Leaving without washing… I should be able to citizen’s arrest people who do that. I don’t care if you had a false alarm, you still came in contact with germs.
You realize germs are EVERYWHERE right? The keyboard you’re using? The mouse? The chair you sit on? Hell, the fucking air you breathe.
Barring a sweaty session at the gym, your dick is probably the cleanest part of your body. The only reason anyone thinks otherwise is because we’re are trained to think anything associated with a penis is filthy.
Thank you, that’s always bothered me when people say that. And they get upset when your butt’s on them. It’s clean! Two layers of cloth protect it from anything dirty!
you guys are obviously not up on the laws of contamination, some of the most dangerous bacteria are near your genital area, the human digestive system contains E-coli and staph, at ALL times, this comes out when you take a crap, it grows throughout the day after your shower (amongst other bacteria as well) spreading all over surrounding areas, contamination of genitals is pretty much assured in all but the the most obsessively clean people.
I hate when I see people post incredibly ignorant stuff like your comments, because the bacteria you expose others to with your obvious lack of basic hygiene can actually KILL people who are immuno-compromised in the community if they are exposed, my own mother who has cancer was almost killed by a staph infection she received after getting a paper cut from a LETTER!
Educate yourselves, please! even a little time on google will help you out
you do know if you get in contact with the germs enough you become immune to the illnesses they carry right?? its a true fact, if you live in a bubble your whole life the moment you come out you die.
why you think every 1 is getting more sick so often its not cause of not washing your hands its from doing it to much, same with showers and all that, you gotta build up an immunity at some point, if ye dont your screwed once the idiots at the companies dig up some super virus plague thing.
dont try to over protect yourselves, cause you end up hurting yourself in the end. keep clean but dont be a freak about it and piss and moan and call people ignorant for what they say cause that only makes you seem like an idiot.
That is only correct with some bacteria, You cannot become immune to ALL pathogens, If you don’t want to believe some one who’s college degree was earned by studying this and other similar subjects, Feel free to expose yourself over and over again to staph and ecoli, in fact, smear fecal matter all over yourself, then start cutting yourself, after awhile you will become immune right? have fun with that experiment, I am looking forward to reading about your Darwin award.
If we’re calling votes on who sounds like an idiot, I’m on the side of the guy who would rather his mum not eat it from dick germs vs. the people who brag about not washing their hands before handling their #1 and #2 business. Here, I’ll sprinkle some urine on my hands, and then shake yours! no problem, right?
But given that I could sum up the sides of this argument in such a crass and nasty manner, maybe the smarter thing would’ve been to leave this thread alone. Guess I’m not -with- stupid, I just am. New Years Resolution? Don’t attempt to mediate forum-wars :-p. Oops, it’s the 3rd, I’m too late.
You put it well Aaron, Im not one to normally argue with anyone, let alone on the internet, but I just get tired of these people who try to defend horrifically bad hygiene which can actually KILL other people with fuzzy logic like “we can build up a resistance to SOME pathogens, so we can build up a resistance to ALL pathogens!”
Unfortunately, for human beings, that is not possible, also, many pathogens mutate when we have built up a resistance, so they can do what they are designed to do, live, reproduce, and as a side effect, kill us.
There IS such thing as being TO obsessively clean, it CAN be harmful, But there is no such thing as being to clean when it comes to the bathroom, Ecoli and staph (or MRSA if your REALLY unlucky) mutate quickly, are infamous for doing so, your body cannot get resistant to them, especially not the body of a stage 3 cancer patient.
So anyone reading this conversation, please Er on the side of reason, and science, and by all means, don’t take my word for it, research!
oh and about your mom whose immuno compromised, shut up, cause my mom is as well and she doesnt piss and moan about it, its a lifestyle they go through, almost ANYTHING an immuno-compromised person touches if its even food they eat and cook themselves they can get sick, with the paper cut shoulda washed her hands.
also staph can be formed by other means than a paper cut or from your ass, educate yourself on that cause gues what, ITS ALSO AIR BORN, she coulda stood next to some one with it and said hello and got it, do your research on these deseases before you piss and moan at some 1 for not being hygenic or bubbly as you would like.
but yeah if your at a public place wash your hands, or if you have company over wash em, but if your to much of a damn germaphobe, find the bubble and never have contact with any one again and never complain bout germs cause you cant get rid of em permanatly, wether good or bad.
btw, when you have sex your exchanging your bad germs with your partner, or hired playmate. and not all of em are STDs, and your bed is also covered in bad germs to, cause you sweat em out. you fart em out, and drool em out, also on that note your mouth is actualy the most germ infested part of your body, not your ass or crotch =) and when i say yours i mean the entire human populace, wanna know how filthy the human mouth is?? its alot dirtier than a dogs, and they eat SHIT, and lick thier crotch and asses.
enjoy the thoughts King has now left in your head =)
Actually, its been proven that dogs do not have cleaner mouths than humans. Most humans, anyway.
As for the whole immune system thing, while constant hand washing alone can be bad, I find constant exposure to some of the less nasty bacteria compensates.
For example: I rarely wash my hands at home unless I’ve been grubbing around outside. I wash my hands like a germophobe anywhere else. Thus far, I’m not dead and spend a large portion of time feeling excellent.
you are literally insane King, I went to college for this, I graduated, I get payed roughly $16,000 a month working as an RN and EMT (60 hours a week), and not a thing you have said is accurate, do you get your info off of wikipedia or some similar place? staph airborne? seriously? its “formed? are you kidding me?
Washing her hands doesnt protect her from staph on the envelope that cuts her, as its immediately introduced into her body from the envelope that cuts her… the staph was ON the envelope, and traced back to the mail carrier, lawsuit won and helping to pay for her nurse while Im at work.
Staph isnt “formed” by any action, it is a living bacteria that thrives in ones bowels, and only gets anywhere else on the body through bad hygiene, you should really stop now, your ignorance is probably making people shit themselves from laughing so hard, and that is REALLY not conducive to good hygiene.
You are half right about the mouth though, the largest amount of bacteria can be found in the mouth, the deadliest however are found on and around your genitals and sphincter.
And last but not least, I call BULLSHIT on your mom being immuno-compromised, because if she was, and you are around her often with hygiene like yours, she would already be dead, could be possible that you just completely misunderstand what that term even means, seeing as you think staph is “formed” and airborne…
Anyway, Its obvious your a bored little boy playing around on the internet trying to troll the adults, you shouldn’t talk about things you have not the slightest clue about, go to college, get a degree, become an RN and an EMT, work both jobs for 17 years, then come back and talk, ok kid?
There are different germs around your gastrointestinal tract that can wreak havoc when they’re not where they’re supposed to be. I used to work in a food plant, I know there’s germs everywhere, but there are good germs and bad germs, germs that can cause companies to lose millions of dollars, or have you missed those E. coli scares last year?
This thread may be the best tangent ever posted in a Treading Ground comic page.
Not washing hands after using the bathroom is bad, particularly if you handle food between leaving the bathroom and washing your hands somewhere else.
However, it is not so terrible as to be terrible – much less criminal – unless you’re doing so while also having a disease or the flu or something.
People are stupid. Deal with it.
And if you do wash your hands, for the Gods’ sake will you please f***ing dry them before you grab the f***ing door handle? I swear I am not normally a violent person…
better yet, don’t touch the door handle at all. I always wonder why we have automatic front doors on office buildings, but rarely if ever automatic toilet doors. If even a small percentage (and it usually isn’t that small) doesn’t wash, or washes inadequately, those door handles will not only be pretty darn contaminated (and as you say moist, too) but they’re also the one thing everyone is guaranteed to touch in between hand washing and hitting the keyboard and mouse at the flexible workstations…
You hit the nail right on. Leave me be. There are better places to hold conversion… like ,over, You know, the other amber colored liquid… beer.
Ginger ale?
cream soda?
I – I swear it IS lemonade! Right?
Crap soda?
Dude, stop drinking at your local.
You should’ve added people that don’t flush #2. Sometimes they don’t wash their hands along with that. They should be tased upon attempting to leave the bathroom.
Agreed. Man, my complete list of complaints would have made this a multi-part comic.
do eeet O_O
You got a quarter?
Hollar back!
Holy shit…Call back!
One time at a microbiology convention I got a girl to try a project with me. I quietly hung around the men’s bathroom and she did the women’s and we noted how many of the people failed to wash their hands before or after they used the facilities.
After about 50 each, we gave up. Every single one of them washed their hands before and after. Because microbiologists understand.
If you think about things you might get on your hands by touching your private parts, consider what you might get on your hands by touching the world — before you touch your private parts.
EXACTLY! :) its always smart to wash before and after, Also, I moisturize my hands with hemp seed oil afterward, which also has the added benefit of having been shown to kill M.E.R.S.A. :D
Unless you’re planning to wipe out a small dock in Egypt, I’m assuming you mean MRSA.
5’th rule: No, I don’t care how close we are, I’m not going to hold your hand while you dump a brown nuke.
Suck it up.
Someone asked you to do that? dude.
Tactical nuke incomming!!!! IT’S ALL OVER!!!!!~MW2
One urinal apart minimum! Oh and if you stare at my junk I should have the right to face plant you into your urinal cake.
Someone really needs to explain that to the people at my work. -_- Along with the urinal talking.
This comic hits a surprisingly rich internet vein. Search this topic on Youtube and you’ll find a range of instructional videos, some of which are beyond hilarious. I especially like the one that postulates that deviation from the rules of bathroom etiquette causes murderous rages and rioting.
@Masterof7s Dude. I’m not worried about your dong so much as the rest of the world. Even if we didn’t need to defecate or excrete urine, we’d still be better off washing our hands several times daily.
Also, a note to the people that just run their fingers under the water, dry, then leave:
You’re not fooling anyone except possibly yourself. And you’re just feeding those bacteria some water. Thirsty, thirsty bacteria.
Then again, some of us are sensitive to whatever-the-hell-it-is-they-put-into-those-industrial/commercial-grade-soaps. There’s literally nothing more irritating than breaking out in hives after washing with that stuff and having to spend hours trying (and *NOT* always succeeding!) to keep from scratching your skin bloody until you can put some calamine lotion on. Given a choice between that and plain water; well, I think that you can guess what I’m going to use. (Thankfully someone invented hand sanitizer which, while it does have alcohol which will eventually dry out my skin, doesn’t seem to cause me any allergic reactions.)
I can think of an exception to the rule of panel #3. Back in the days when I was carrying out my conscript duty in our armed forces the stalls in the restroom of one of the barracks had no doors. And the arrangement of the stalls was known as “V6”. Under those circumstances this rule was quickly replaced with: “Given an option, thou shall not use a stall facing in the direction opposite to one already in use.” I mean, it’s one thing to be 15 inches away from a guy squeezing out a log, and another thing looking at him in the eye, while he does that. In case of an emergency at an instant of high occupation level stare at the floor, but…please wait if at all possible.
You know I hate the public restrooms that have no doors to the stalls, I don’t care that we’re all women, I don’t care that it’s supposedly to cut down on drug usage in the restroom. I do not, and I repeat, I do not want to walk into a ladies room and have to see another woman changing her tampon or wiping shit off of her ass. Some things should not be shared by anyone.
Amazing how many people don’t follow these rules(men obviously, but I suspect a few women do too). #2 is freaking huge to me because my ex taught me that you always wash your hands after using the bathroom(and doing other things too). I learned a lot from her, but I’ve also learned a lot from this little strip too. Think this should be a thing you should do just to throw people off.
Not washing your hands after urinating is forgivable, urine is a sterile liquid. Not washing your hands after taking a crap IS NOT. While urine is sterile feces ARE NOT. If you wipe your ass wash your hands. If you don’t wipe your ass and just pull up your pants, well you’re just a disgusting bastard.
Actually, urine is very NOT sterile, i have taken a urinalysis course, and even healthy urine is VERY filthy under the microscope. Im not sure where that urban legend got started
I’d heard that urine was only sterile to the body that it is leaving and only for about 30 seconds after it leaves the body. Don’t know where I heard that though.
Now we know how to annoy the heck out of Nick! :)
Apparently, there are gay bars and clubs that have circular urinals where everyone is facing everyone else, and nothing is hidden from view. Can’t confirm if this is true however. Never been to a gay bar or club, and haven’t found any pictures on-line of this alleged urinal design.
Not washing your hands however, ick!
Well that seems a bit discriminatory and unfair. What about all the homosexuals who don’t want to watch each other do their buisness between drinks?
Yeah, I wonder if that’s not a bit of heterosexual mythology.
Holy crap! Nate broke the fourth wall. How am i going to maintain my suspension of disbelief now?
I wouldn’t consider this canon. I needed someone to deliver home the point for this special comic, and Nate fit the bill.
Many people don’t want to touch the public restroom door handle when exiting. Some businesses have addressed this issue by installing foot operated door openers (like StepNpull). StepNpull gives you the option of pulling the door open with your foot instead of touching the door handle.
I also know: Dont go to first stall in a row, drunkards go to vomit there :D
Also some my experience: I had worked for year at gasoline station and there i also did cleaning toilets and i can say that female toilets were much more dirty than male ones. That was quite surprise for me.
No big surprise to me that the women’s was dirtier than the mens. Men generally only use the stalls for one thing, whereas women have to do everything from taking a piss, taking a crap, and changing tampons. Lot more options for something to go wrong there, what get’s me is that so many women actually leave the mess instead of trying to clean it up.
My mother always taught me that if you miss then clean up what you left. I can’t say just how many public ladies rooms I have gone into where there are dirty tampons left on the floor, or blood, or piss, or excrement left on the toilet seat.
I mean I guess I can understand if there is no toilet paper left to clean up with but there is just no other excuse for that in my opinion.
I worked a short stint as a janitor. [When you’re broke a job that keeps a roof over your head and food in your belly is not beneath you.] Without fail, te women’s bathroom was ALWAYS dirtier than the men’s was.
Not talking to me in the restroom includes cell-phones–whatever end I’m near…
God I hate that! There is no reason to keep talking to someone on the phone when you are doing your business. That just shows what an absolute douche bag you are.
Oh hey Jim….. What am I doing right now you ask?…..Why, i’m taking a crap!
You’d think that people would learn these things as they grow up, but sometimes they don’t, and you really have to spell it out for them. I always follow Rule #1, and #3. #2, not so much. ;) Walgreens rules!
I know where to drop the log when you next to someone….Taco Bell.
Hah, I can understand the gripes of the comic. ^.^ Mostly unrelated, it was real interesting when a kid threw up in the mens room, not in the toilet mind you, at my work place(pizza) and the kid’s parent didn’t even bother to clean it up.
Of course not, in our world these days so many people have a sense of self entitlement that it doesn’t even occur to them that they should do anything about stuff that they or their kids do.
I mean in their minds that’s what the staff is there for, they get paid to clean up the bathrooms after all, so why should the customer be bothered to clean up after their own kid?
God I hate people with that kind of attitude.
You may be interested in the instructional video: Male Restroom Etiquette: http://tinyurl.com/MRRE101
I got a story for you…I worked on a secured floor in a state government office full of lawyers and HR staff. Went into the bathroom on Thursday to discover that someone threw himself a wrist party in the large stall, and painted a Protein Pollock all over the toilet paper dispenser.
So not only am I forced into the indignity of doing the brown trout shuffle over to the next stall so I can finish up and clean myself, I had to try and find a nice, clean, work friendly way of explaining to the supervisor on duty that someone wacked off in the bathroom and made a hell of a mess.
1. “Wrist party” is hilarious. Hadn’t heard that one before.
2. Kudos to you for taking the responsibility of telling the proper authorities. Most people would have left it there for the next unsuspecting victim.
I’ve yelled at so many people for talking to me whilst I was using the bathroom.
“Pee time is ME time, damnit!”
haha I never did get why in tv shows guys talked while they were pissing. It was just weird and yea.. Sounds so uncool. If I was a guy I wouldn’t want someone talking to me while I was pissing either. And as for Piss hands Jeff. That made me laugh cause I knew a guy named Jeff who was a complete ass. This makes me think of him and piss hands now. lol yea idk why.. lol
You spelled my name wrong, you bastard :(
If I had known you wanted the honor…
I thought you’d have known me well enough by now :)
Wrist party. LOOOOL
I would’ve been tempted to put up an informative poster in the men’s room after that; a poster detailing the proper way form a toilet paper cum catcher, semen screen, or man-juice mop. I’d probably end it with the caption: “Remember, don’t squirt and run.”
What is it with people who feel the toilet is the place to carry on a conversation?
“…then I said – hrrrrr – ahhhh – ‘that isn’t how its…”
It can wait. Really.
That door handle on the way out… all those non-washing people. I use a paper towel to open the door.
And I do understand the “building an immunity” thing. No antibacterial soap for me if I have a choice and I don’t wash my hands all that much except for the bathroom situation and between massage clients. And when handling food. You don’t ever get immune to e-coli or staph. Not even your own. Lower GI bugs that are already harmlessly in you can get you really, really sick – healthy to dead in a couple of days sick – by getting in other parts of you.
Is it just me, or does that guy look like Dick from Steve’s Inappropriate Childhood Stories? O_o