You, oh café owner, might think you are being cute, or clever, or witty, or enhancing the themed design of your café. But to anyone with children who are old enough to go to the loo on their own, but not old enough to interpret which the right loo is from your oh-so-amusing signage, you are an annoyance. You are the difference between me enjoying a cup of coffee in peace, and me having to get up, leave the table, walk across the café, and interpret loo signs with a child, when I don't even need to go to the loo myself. That is annoying.
This applies to you, if you are the owner of the cafés I've been in where the loos are designated:
- M/F
- Bruces/Sheilas (ok, so that one was in an Australian-themed restaurant, but couldn't there be easy-to-understand signs as well as the atmosphere-enhancing titles?)
- Messieurs/Mesdames (same point)
- A picture of a deer's head with antlers/A picture of deer's head without antlers
- A moustache/A symbol that looked like a head with a pony tail - but who knows?
- A man's shoe/A woman's shoe
- The circle with the arrow pointing North East/The circle with the cross at the bottom (what ARE those symbols called? Is it Mars and Venus? And I bet there's a café somewhere with signs saying Mars and Venus on the toilet doors too.)
I've been noticing them for several years now - ever since my oldest reached toilet-independence age. Have you seen any annoying ones recently? Can't we just stick to something like this one here?
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Totally know what you're talking about though my kids are still in the stage where I have to get up and take them. Actually I'm at the stage where the girls can no longer go with their dad (as they might have when they were really little) and so I am forever having to get up from my coffee to take them because they can't coordinate going at the same time.
ReplyDeleteIt's confusing when you're in a foreign-themed restaurant (as opposed to a real foreign restaurant, ie. in a different country) and they use the initial of the foreign words for Male and Female. They have every right to, but I always have to double check. Mind you, the smell of most men's loos stops you as soon as you open the door!
ReplyDeleteYes, yes yes totally agree - and also the ones that are so small/subtle that you can hardly see them. And "trendy" loos with such dim lighting that you can't see well enough to do your business, and taps that are so trendy they don't work. I'm all for nice restaurant loos, but make them functional please!
ReplyDeleteI'd always assumed that sign was hubby and I lying in bed and the black line was the wind whipping down between us as we play "give me my half of the quilt" wrestling.
ReplyDeleteDaughter and I regularly went into the wrong loos on one holiday because of bad signage, the only clue being the urinals, but to be quite honest in some of the posher/weirder designed places even they didn't give it away straight away.
How about the ones where the doors are semi hidden behind murals etc...oh how we laugh....not...as everyone else enjoys us making fools of ourselves!
Oh, I agree with you on this one - when we first moved to the Southwest, I did OK in theme-type Mexican restaurants with things like 'senores' or 'senoras' on the doors, but with smaller local places, I can tell you that the word 'mujer'(woman) was NOT in my vocabulary when I first got there (it is now.)
ReplyDeleteHere in Korea, we often run into a different problem, especially at smaller/older restaurants: the unisex toilet. This will be a small bathroom (with no lock on the door) that, when opened, reveals a stall (with a lock) AS WELL AS a urinal and a sink. This means that, the entire time you are doing your business in the stall, you are praying that a gentleman does not enter, which then (in my book, at least) would require that you stay in the stall until he is finished and has left, because I am just not cool enough to stroll casually by a strange man using a urinal in the bathroom with me. Go ahead and call me prudish or provincial - I am OK with it. Equally awkward is opening the door to the back of a strange gentleman using the urinal. The expectation is, of course, that I will just casually saunter past him into the stall and begin my own activities, but I've never done anything but back out hastily and wait for the gentleman in question to emerge.
I agree 100% It drives me mad too. I can't remember where I was (probably some trendy/themed restaurant somewhere) but I had to stand for ages wondering which was the correct door. I think in the end I only found out when I saw someone coming out. I wish I could remember where it was.
ReplyDeleteHere in Wales we have it in two languages!
ReplyDeleteHehe! There are some that are so obscure and comedic that even an adult (me!) cannot work out which one to enter!
ReplyDeleteThe ones with clear glass doors - which apparently go frosty when you lock them - are worse....
ReplyDeleteI say apparently because I wasn't prepared to try.
And don't even get me started on the (gay) nightclub in Russia that had cctv screens in the ladies showing what was going on in the gents...
Ha ha, totally agree. Have stood for ages trying to work out which one I'm supposed to use. I run in and out as quickly as I can in case I've made the wrong choice!
ReplyDeleteHave you seen the ones at Legoland with Lego people crossing legs, and a rather dubious Lego baby with a grim looking nappy? Almost impossible to work out which gender is which there.
ReplyDeleteI remember one sea-faring restaurant had bathrooms called "Gulls" and "Buoys." It makes more sense in England where "buoys" is pronounced "boys," rather than in America, where it's pronounced "booooeeees"!
ReplyDeleteThe signs with the "circle/nw arrow" and "circle pointing down" you wondered about are the signs for gender differences in biological sciences (such as genetics, epigenetics etc.) Enjoy your blog so hope you enjoy your break. liz in texas
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