Confused traveller seeks advice on Aussie toilets – where do I stand?
A UK visitor has reached out to Aussie men for help with many locals just as baffled by his question.
Where to pee or not to pee? That is the question one visiting urinal user asked after being baffled by Australia's male public toilets.
Arriving from the UK, the confused man took to social media to ask the locals about whether he should stand on the metal grate commonly seen in the men's toilet. "I’ve been in Australia for about two weeks and have noticed these grids on the urinals in every restroom. Do I stand on them or piss on them, I’m confused??" he said on Reddit.
The pressing question clearly resonated with many, who had mixed responses, but some couldn't help taking the "piss" out of the UK visitor. "It stops the crocs getting out of the drain," one person said of the urinal's grate.
"I've been here for 30+ years and I can honestly say that I've got no idea," another confused bloke chimed in. But even more confused was a female Reddit reader who came across the thread. "As a woman, this entire thread is like listening to aliens discuss quantum physics," she contributed.
Standing on the grate or the floor
Among a lengthy list of responses, including one claiming to be a "piss grate engineer", many believed you "definitely" stand on the grate while others wholeheartedly believed the tiles were for standing on if you didn't want to cop a "piss ricochet".
Luckily, Yahoo News Australia reached out to an expert to settle it once and for all, who said it comes down to "common sense more than anything". "The idea of that grate is to actually stand on it so you're closer to the wall, with the reason being that urine has uric acid in it," a spokesman for longtime Australian company Stoddart Plumbing said.
"If it gets into the tiles and grout, its actually very difficult to get rid of it, hence why you go into lots of men's bathrooms and they don't smell the best. The idea is to step up onto that metal platform so you don't dribble everywhere."
The angle of the dangle
When bringing up the inevitable question of 'splash back' and how to navigate that when standing on the metal grates, the spokesman said "it's just a thing of physics". "You direct the stream where it belongs in the trough on an angle," he said. "The more acute the angle the less the splash. Simple as that. With the little return then going into the grate."
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"When little boy are little boys they have this thing of seeing how far they can pee up the wall," the spokesman said.
"And part of that is that it splashes back on them sooner or later, and they think 'oh I shouldn't do that'. Some people don't really care, its a question of hygiene. Most men will not have it splashing back on their shoes and trousers, it's just a sensible thing to do."
Whatever you do, the urinal spokesman urges people not to "pee on the floor". "A lot of the time guys don’t get that education, but at the end of the day it just comes down to common sense more than anything. Men have that problem [of not knowing how to angle properly], some do it well and some don't."
So it sounds like if you want something sturdy to stand on that can be properly cleaned and reduce splash back, the metal grate is your best friend. "Telling all my mates to get over to Australia just for the piss engineering," the UK man jokingly said in the Reddit post.
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