Lord Ellpus wrote:I don't know whether automatic toilets exist in the USA.....
.......but they do in the UK. These things are a self contained metal structure, placed in the high street, and are automatically self cleaning when the user has gone. As the door closes after the person has made their exit, sprayers start up inside, making it nice and shiny for the next person. They usually cost about ten pence to use, and you put your money in a slot outside, which releases the locking mechanism on the door. Gentle music is played whilst one is in there, in order to make the crap as stress free as possible.
The only trouble is, young rascals soon worked out that, if they put ten pence in the slot and opened the door, and then slowly closed it until it appeared shut, but wasn't......the next person (no doubt desparate for a poo) would pay their money and think that THEY had released the door, go in, close the door behind them and immediately start the cubcle cleaning cycle, as it thinks that the previous user has just exited.
Passers by would hear Handels water music gently wafting from the unit, accompanied by shrieks and screams of a person trying to dodge multiple jets of foamy water...........
I can't believe I'm about to tell y'all the following story.
I was 20 years old, wandering about Paris by myself. I took a train to Versailles, and by the time it arrived, I had to take a serious piss. I saw the magical machine pictured in Ellpus' post.
Clever American that I was and still am, I thought I'd totally "fukk the system" and grab the door as the person before me was leaving, so that it wouldn't lock, and so I wouldn't have to PAY TO PISS. Or maybe I even had to lay a deuce, I can't quite remember.
Mind you, I'd never seen one of these contraptions before. I thought it would be like the "Port-o-lets" they got over here, in which piles of **** simply fester for eternity. No automatic cleaning system.
I do, however, remember after a split second of feeling pretty satisfied at my ingenuity, the lights suddenly going out. I knew something seriously wrong and French was about to happen. Water started spraying from the walls, sort of a fine mist. The door was locked. I panicked. I thought, "Great, I'm fukkin trapped in a port-o-potty at Versailles. Never mind the hall of mirrors, Lous XIV's extravagant gardens, wait 'til I tell mom about the first-rate shitters!"
Fortunately the thing unlocks once it's done cleaning. Fortunately it was only a fine mist, so I wasn't soaked. But, boy, I no longer relatiate when a Parisian stereotype smirks and mutters under his breath as he passes, "Stupid American."
