DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I realized with dismay that the enormous pile of cash recently spent by my alma mater to remodel its stadium did not include sufficient budget for bathrooms. Or perhaps the designers were attempting to match the existing architectural style, and keep with tradition, for in the men’s rooms they’ve installed troughs in lieu of urinals.

There are a number of reasons why troughs might be appropriate, or even preferable. As one friend remarked, if a stadium patron is feeling discomfort and possesses an urgent desire to use this sort of facility, a trough tends to be more accomodating, in the sense that it’s somewhat easier to crowd around it without any of the social pressure that would prohibit the alternative (sharing a urinal).

One might suppose that troughs are more space-efficient than urinals. Looking at a long wall of troughs, it’s easy enough to imagine dozens of men standing elbow to elbow. But this projection is inaccurate. Indeed, I believe that the overall throughput of a trough-equipped restroom is lower than that of a more, or in this case less-traditionally fixtured restroom.

During my long wait in line, I immediately saw two reasons why. The first is that men tend not to want to stand too close to one another in the restroom. Lines had formed at 3' intervals — urinal spacing, I realized — and it was clear that everyone acted as if privacy partitions separated each line.

The other problem is more serious. I stood in line for nearly ten minutes, which is an interminably long time for a person who’d just sucked down two liters of water. There were only a handful of guys ahead of me, but each one took minutes: a few seconds to approach the trough and arrange the necessary interfaces as it were, maybe 15 seconds to actually urinate, and 90 seconds in between to excise whatever demons had taken over the circuitboard, to allow nature to complete its call. In two words, the trough system is crippled by stage fright.

That, or everyone had prostate trouble. Maybe next time I should use the restrooms in the student section.

---

The idea that this stadium sits empty for all but about five Saturdays a year, but then hosts 60000 men who make perhaps 120,000 visits to the trough in the space of four hours, made me wonder about the total fluid output. Something about the flow rate going from zero to staggering, then back to zero, demands my attention. So, I’m thinking, 80k visitors (including the women) times 2 liters/day average output (a high average, but it accounts for the rabid tailgating before the game) times .25 (because a four-hour game occupies 1/4 of an average person’s waking, aka urinating hours for the day, and no, real men don’t get up in the night to pee) comes to a sewer-busting 40000 liters, or, for those of us who were drinking American beer on Saturday, 10500 gallons… or 44 gallons per minute!

OK, I’m better now. Feel free to rehash this analysis at your next office lunch gathering or cocktail party.

Tags:
posted to channel: Travel
updated: 2004-02-22 22:49:16