A few years ago I visited three different McDonalds in Washington DC. All three were newly renovated in downtown.
All three restrooms were unlocked and disgusting. After notifying the staff I figured out some homeless would vent their rage by literally smearing their feces on the walls. When the staff clean it up, they would do it again.
That’s seriously disgusting. But even without mental illness, you still have people that seem like they don’t know bathroom etiquette. I worked at a retailer during college that had a public bathroom, seemingly normal people still did the most disgusting messes in the toilets that I was left to clean.
When I was a teenager, I worked as a janitor at McDonalds as my after-school job, and I cleaned the bathrooms. I walked the lobby all the time and could see who was going in and out, and I can assure you (at least back then) there is no correlation between socio-economic class and bathroom etiquette, or mental illness and bathroom etiquette. We had a feces-smearer who was a middle aged lady visiting the restaurant with her normal-looking middle class family. One other fun fact: The men's room was pretty uniformly (but medium) disgusting, but the women's room was where the variance was. I saw foulness in the women's restroom that haunts me to this day.
The McDonalds in downtown Dallas, at least for a time, played classical music outside as well as inside. The theory was that the homeless wouldn't hang around as much. This was back in the 80s when my mom worked downtown, and it was common water cooler conversation. I'm sure as a manager, you're pretty much willing to try anything to avoid the situation you've described. Making it even harder, the location is one block away from the central Greyhound bus station.
Wouldn't the burden of proof lie with whomever is making the claim of bias? And it would be easily countered with surveillance footage showing just one white male homeless guy getting turned away.
This is one of the most out of touch aggressive replies I've ever seen
As someone who worked in food service in a major city, we 100% had a homeless person who came in and destroyed the bathroom multiple times. Everyone who worked there knew him and felt bad for the guy, but we had to ask him to leave when we saw him come in because he would do things like what the other commenter described.
> Some have been disgusting in places, but I've never seen what you imagine.
Because someone cleaned it up before you saw it? I worked at Seattle’s 3rd and Pine McDonald’s back in the mid 90s (if you live in Seattle, you know the place). We had lots of unhoused neighbors coming in doing really horrible things to our bathrooms. When someone reportedly all we could do was put our bathroom out of order until someone (like me) could clean it up.
Unmonitored public bathrooms simply don’t exist in downtown Seattle because they can’t be maintained without someone to constantly clean them and lock them up if things get too bad.
Lots of other crazy things happened at that place. Seriously, anyone who doesn’t understand homelessness should try working at a fast food restaurant in the downtown of a big city. But it never got boring there, and the coworkers (mostly Filipino) were all cool to work with.
It’s easy to say that those things never happen from the suburbs or uptowns where they never happen. But downtown or in grungier parts of the city, you just know they happen and are actually common.
Again, maybe we can do better than attribute a difference of opinion or experience to the other person being ignorant. As I've said three times now, I'm not writing from the suburbs or 'uptown' (not what you think it is in many cities!); I've been in the areas you name daily for many years. (Have you?)
IME it's the reverse: if you aren't from those areas, it's easier to believe the negative hype. The people most terrified of cities don't live in them - the less contact they have, the more they believe these things. A very recent survey showed how Republicans, who are rare among urban residents, have by far the most concerns about cities. It was the NYC suburbs that voted Republican because of concern about crime - in the city where they don't live (and where people voted Democratic). It's easier to believe these crazy stories if you aren't there, about the 'other'.
Now I'm in cities that are, in places absurdly safe. Downtowns filled with people who are going about their days, not a care in the world. Yet I hear suburbanties say they are afraid to come downtown. It's laughable. And then I turn on cable TV or HN and read how dangerous it is, how crazy homeless people are - places I am and people I talk to daily.
It's like standing in the sunshine and hearing people insist that it's raining here. It's that absurd. I don't doubt others have different personal experiences, and I'm glad to read about them - the speculative, uninformed BS, not so much.
I did not make the story up. I talked to the workers at all three restaurants. They hemmed and hawed because there were families eating in the facility and didn't want to gross people out.
> I've lived and spent my time in major cities most of my life. I've used many public urban bathrooms. Like many things in cities, they are used much more heavily and often are less clean. Some have been disgusting in places, but I've never seen what you imagine.
I'm not op. I've been in public restrooms smeared with faeces.
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
All three restrooms were unlocked and disgusting. After notifying the staff I figured out some homeless would vent their rage by literally smearing their feces on the walls. When the staff clean it up, they would do it again.