Why are public bathrooms designed so poorly? (Devan Design Week)

Summary

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NO SUCH THING Podcast – Episode Summary

Episode: Why Are Public Bathrooms Designed So Poorly? (Devin Design Week)
Date: July 22, 2026
Hosts: Devin Joseph, Manny Noah, Special Guests: Katie Dayton (WSJ), Sadie (Bring Back Doors), Charlotte Gartenberg (Welcome to the Bathroom), Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado)

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the lingering question: Why are public (and especially hotel) bathrooms designed so poorly? The trio of journalists — Devin, Manny, and Noah — begin with a hilarious but relatable rant on “open concept” hotel bathrooms, progress to a searching investigation into why sensor-driven fixtures are so often unreliable or exclusionary, and conclude with a definitive, highly opinionated ranking of bathroom door locks. The episode features stories from traumatized hotel guests, expert insights from industry reporters, and plenty of nostalgia (and disgust) for malfunctioning bathroom tech. The tone is witty, incredulous, and empathetic to the struggles of anyone who's ever needed a truly private restroom experience.

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1. Open Concept Hotel Bathrooms: “Whose Idea Was This?”

The Phenomenon (03:03–10:57)

• Devin’s Complaint: Hotels removing doors and walls — “open concept bathrooms.”
• Manny’s Miami Story: Early in his relationship, Manny stayed at a hotel with a shower that offered only a silhouetted wall for privacy. “You could see the silhouette of their body… it was just like, well, this is kind of awkward.” (05:01)
• Privacy Woes: The team agrees: even for couples, sometimes you want a bathroom door.
• Sadie’s Crusade: Sadie from Bring Back Doors describes being “radicalized” after sharing a doorless room with her dad (07:46):

  “We check in and we walk in and there’s just no bathroom door. And the website photos, everything online had shown a bathroom door. So we were not prepared…” (07:46)

• Classification System: Sadie categorizes hotels by privacy:
  • Zero Privacy: no door/wall, or glass wall/window into bath.
  • 50% Privacy: frosted glass.
  • 80% Privacy: sliding or slatted doors.

Memorable Quote:

"I don't know what hotel chain needs to hear this, but put the bathroom doors back! Not a curtain, not a sliding door." — Sadie (07:00)

Why Do Hotels Do This? (13:33–21:30)

• Guest: Katie Dayton, Wall Street Journal reporter
• Justifications from Hoteliers:
  • Space: Removing partitions makes the room look (and photograph) bigger.
  • Photos & Marketing: Open spaces photograph better for online booking.
  • Cost: Fewer walls/doors means lower material and labor expenses, e.g., “if you enclose a room from natural light, you need a lightbulb...if you have one in every hotel room, at some point you have to pay labor to fix it” (17:00).
  • Finances: Thin profit margins post-pandemic plus a push to compete with Airbnb.
• Do Guests Complain?
  • Very few do. Katie speculates it’s embarrassment, resignation, or the assumption hotels won’t/can’t fix it trip-by-trip.

Conspiracy Theory: Hotels may be subtly discouraging group bookings by making rooms inconvenient for families, nudging people to rent two rooms instead of one (20:42).

Larger Trend:

“It truly just does speak to how little corporations seem to take on the customer experience… until people outright riot and say, I will not be giving you my business, I don't think anything is going to change.” — Katie Dayton (21:31)

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2. The Sensor Epidemic: Flushing, Washing, and Racial Bias

Bathroom Sensors Suck (23:21–29:17)

• Automatic Flushing: Too eager (phantom flushes while you’re still on the toilet), yet reluctant when you actually want to flush (24:20).
• Automatic Faucets and Race:
  • Devin describes repeated issues:

    “A lot of times these sink sensors do not work for me specifically… I have to get a paper towel to hold in front of the sensor so that the sink can turn on so I could wash my hands.” (24:55)

  • Manny tested this: Sensors react inconsistently to darker skin tones — the palm (lighter) works better than the back of the hand (25:29).

Hand Dryers vs. Paper Towels (26:38–28:55)

• Crowded Bathrooms: Hand dryers cause lines with slow turnover during busy events.
• The “Dirty Air” Scare:
  • 2016 studies alleged high-efficiency dryers (like Dyson Airblade) spread 1,300 times more germs than paper towels.
  • Yet, not every bathroom offers paper towels — possibly due to cleanliness or cost concerns.

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3. Are Sensors Racist? An Expert Deep-Dive

With Charlotte Gartenberg, host of Welcome to the Bathroom (31:53–48:14)

When Did Sensors Take Over? (33:06–34:00)

• The tech was developed in Japan in the 1980s, spread through the US in the 1990s.
• Primary Reasons for Adoption:
  • Cost: Cheaper long-term, both in labor and utility.
  • Environmental: Sensor faucets use less water per minute.
  • Hygiene: Less touching of surfaces (perception of cleanliness).

How Do Sensors Work? (34:39–36:17)

• They emit and receive infrared light; if an object (such as hands or body) reflects the light, action is triggered.
• Key Problem: Reflectivity.

  “If you wore black clothing and the material was particularly fluffy, the signal being sent may not have been caught by the sensor because it wasn’t coming back very well reflected off the clothing you had on.” — Bill Strange, Toto (35:53)

• Sinks operate similarly; dark, non-reflective skin absorbs the beam, so the faucet doesn't activate reliably.

“Are they racist?” (36:35–38:41)

• Sensors aren’t “racist by intent” but are designed and calibrated in labs using light/objects easily detected by IR beams (usually lighter surfaces).
• Updating this is technologically trivial, but there’s “no incentive to fix this” unless enough consumers complain (38:02).

  “You can send things to Mars... There’s no incentive to fix this.”

• The segment draws parallels to how cameras originally couldn’t capture darker skin tones.

Greener but Not Cleaner (39:20–41:58)

• Sensors and hand dryers offer environmental and cost benefits — less water/energy use, less need for janitorial labor — but not necessarily more sanitation.
• Stanford Study: “The air dryers really do use fewer resources...” (39:39)
• But for actual cleanliness, paper towels work best (friction removes more bacteria and dries hands better).

Hygiene Doubts (42:55–47:15)

• Papers and Dyson have argued back and forth about whether air dryers are “virus catapults.”
• In hospitals, sensors are being phased out: “Electronic [sensor] faucets had 50% more bacteria than manual ones” (46:52).
• “For the most part, none of these things is cleaner. Actually most of these sensor things make bathrooms less clean. Visually, they're clean. There's no paper towels anywhere. There's no poop in the toilet, no floaters... but they've done studies… they basically trap bacteria. There's no way to properly clean out these faucets.” — Charlotte Gartenberg (46:31)

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4. Bathroom Door Locks: The Ultimate Ranking

With Julia Lindsey, Lock Aficionado (48:27–60:23)

The Stakes

• “This is the most high stakes engagement possible… the only thing standing between me and the worst day of my life… is this lock.” — Julia (49:40)

The Lock Typology

Ranked from least-preferred to most trustworthy:

1. Push-Button Locks (50:54–54:53)

• Common on bathroom handles, especially post-2000.
• Main complaint: No way to test from the inside; you have to trust it “or need a friend outside to check.”

  “I don't know if I've actually ever checked if this lock works... I've been living here 10+ years.” — Devin (52:03)

• Sometimes the difference between locked/unlocked is barely visible/feelable.

2. Turn-Style Knob Locks (55:01–55:45)

• Usually easier to test from inside the bathroom and provide more physical feedback.
• Direction sometimes unintuitive; home renos install them inconsistently.

  “In my apartment, all of the locks are locked if it’s horizontal… except the bathroom is vertical. You have to do a little game in your head every time…” — Manny (55:45)

3. Stall Locks (56:07–56:54)

• Metal rods or rectangles in public stalls. Usually work fine, unless there's a huge gap between door and partition.
• “The gap is really high; you’re going to be constantly monitored through that crack.”

4. Deadbolt Locks — Elite Tier (56:54–58:39)

• Heavy-duty, testable, and unbeatable. Found in bars/dive bars.
• Can be combined with a “vacant/occupied” indicator on the outside — the gold standard.

  “It should be in my home. It should be in every bar, club, restaurant.” — Devin (58:22)

• “I don't understand why every business owner… doesn’t want this system.” — Julia (58:11)

Least Favorite: Chain Locks (60:07–60:23)

• Annoying, unreliable, and can pose a small but real physical hazard if someone tries to force the door.

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Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• “Who wants to see their travel partner take a poop?” — Sadie (06:48)
• “Society, obviously, noticed this was a problem.” — Devin (10:11)
• “There’s no question: Too open a bathroom, nobody wants.” — Manny (11:03)
• “If you wore black clothing… the signal… may not have been caught by the sensor because it wasn’t coming back very well reflected…” — Bill Strange (35:53)
• “Are bathroom sensors racist? Yes.” — Devin (47:17)
• “These designers pick things because it looks nice. But they act as if they are never going to be in our position.” — Devin (58:56)
• “Deadbolt with the signifier on the outside… is the elite tier.” — Julia (58:09)

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Key Timestamps

• 03:03 – Hotel open-bathroom horror stories begin
• 07:29 – Sadie starts Bring Back Doors
• 13:44 – WSJ’s Katie Dayton: industry reasoning explained
• 23:50 – Sensor gripes (phantom flushes, racial bias, hand dryers)
• 31:53 – Welcome, Charlotte Gartenberg, bathroom technology history
• 35:33 – How sensors (and their problems) work
• 36:56 – Skin tone and sensor failure explained
• 42:55 – Hand dryer “virus catapult” controversy explained
• 46:13 – Why hospitals reject sensor faucets
• 48:27 – Bathroom lock typology, Julia Lindsey’s ranking
• 56:54–58:39 – The ultimate lock: deadbolt with status indicator

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Takeaways

• Open-concept bathrooms exist to save hotels money and make rooms photograph better—not because guests want them.
• Bathroom sensors have environmental/plumbing cost benefits but are not especially hygienic—and can be exclusionary to people with darker skin due to how infrared reflectivity works.
• When it comes to privacy and security, nothing beats a deadbolt with a “vacant/occupied” sign—even if they’re less “aesthetically pleasing.”
• Corporations will keep prioritizing design trends and cost-cutting until enough people “riot” with negative feedback and lost business.

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This episode is essential for anyone who's ever cursed under their breath in an “innovative” public restroom—or wondered whether they're the only one baffled at hotel bathroom design.

Transcript

[Devin Joseph]

What's up? It's Devin. We want to hear from y'. All. We are working on an episode about airplane etiquette. We want to know, is it okay for you to recline your seat on an airplane? Leave us a voicemail at the number in our show notes or you can send us a voice memo to mandynoadevinmail.com keep it short and we may feature you in an upcoming episode. All right, after the break. Devin Design Week 2 this is an iHeart podcast.

[Sadie (Bring Back Doors)]

Guaranteed human.

[Kalpen (Kalpen Suresh, host of Hearsay podcast)]

Hey everyone, it's Kalpen. I'm inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with my podcast, Hearsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. Every episode I nerd out with amazing guests and dive into the best new audiobooks available on Audible. It's the book club for your ears. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeartRadio audiobook club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Katie Dayton (Wall Street Journal reporter)]

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[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

Kaleidoscope.

[Manny Noah]

I'm Manny Noah, and this is Devin

[Devin Joseph]

and this is no Such Thing. The show where we set out our dumb arguments and yours by actually doing the research on today's episode. Are bathroom censors actually racist?

[Manny Noah]

There's no.

[Devin Joseph]

No such thing.

[Kalpen (Kalpen Suresh, host of Hearsay podcast)]

No such thing. No such thing. No such thing. No such thing.

[Devin Joseph]

All right, y'. All. Welcome back to another edition of Devin Design Week. Devin Design Week 2, as we call

[Manny Noah]

it, back by popular demand.

[Devin Joseph]

Yes, many people have been asking about it, so if you did not hear Devin Design Week 1. Go back and listen to that. But, you know, I'll explain what we do here on Devin Design week is a series where I complain about designs I hate, and we get to the bottom of why they are the way that they are. Episode two is all about the bathroom. Okay? We're gonna be talking about why bathroom sensors suck. We're gonna rank our favorite and least favorite bathroom locks. But first, we're gonna dive into this phenomenon of hotels removing doors and walls from bathrooms.

[Manny Noah]

Disgusting. Hate this.

[Devin Joseph]

Okay, so if you're not someone who travels a lot or you don't stay in hotels very often, you may be saying, devin, what the are you talking about?

[Manny Noah]

Whoa. They'd be saying, what the hell are you talking about?

[Devin Joseph]

Devin, are you talking about.

[Manny Noah]

Please bleep these. They're shooting their phone right now. These kids listening to this.

[Devin Joseph]

What do you mean that a bathroom doesn't have a door or wall? All right, so this is a newish phenomenon in the hotel industry where they're creating these open concept bathrooms.

[Bill Strange (President of Operations at Toto)]

Yep.

[Devin Joseph]

Okay. There's a bunch of different varieties of these, which we'll talk about a bit later. But first, Manny, you have experienced this open concept bathroom. Yeah, irl A few years ago.

[Manny Noah]

That's right.

[Devin Joseph]

If I remember correctly, you and your current wife were.

[Manny Noah]

My current wife. Current wife. My prior wife.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah, your wife now, who at the time, you guys were not. You were maybe starting to date. Thinking about dating. It was very early stages, as they say in Love Island. It was early days. Early days. And you guys were in Miami.

[Manny Noah]

Here, I'll tell you the story. So here was the setup in the hotel room. You walk in the room, you've got your bed. Obviously there's the bathroom without a door. But specifically, they had this setup where in between the bed and the bathroom was this, like, silhouetted wall. And basically the point was that when your significant other was showering, you could see the silhouette of their body. Um, and, you know, our trip to Miami, that wasn't, like, so out of the question. But I've seen a lot of people online being like, why is this here? I'm here with my mom or, like, my family, and I don't want to see that. And, you know, and if in like, you referred to, like, yeah, we were pretty early on. It wasn't like it was some mysterious thing that I hadn't seen before, but it was just like, well, this is kind of awkward.

[Devin Joseph]

It's kind of putting. It's early relationship putting you kind of on the Spot here to be like, okay, this hotel room that we're. I'm assuming this was like your first trip together.

[Manny Noah]

Yeah, it was.

[Devin Joseph]

Okay, so like early days, first trip together. Now we're sharing a bathroom together. And now the bathroom has like a silhouetted.

[Manny Noah]

Yeah. And it was like, we just thought it was funny, but we immediately thought about like, wow, there's real families.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

Imagine if you were a fan. Hey, you know someone who's been in a relationship before, the bathroom is kind of your private time.

[Manny Noah]

Yeah. Especially when you're traveling.

[Devin Joseph]

Honestly. Yeah. It's your only alone time when you're traveling. Really. It's your only real escape. So, like, even if you're in a long term committed relationship, not sure you necessarily want, you know, for the bathroom to be open concept. But as you can imagine, a lot of people online have been complaining about this.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

Can you please tell me who started

[Advertisement Voice]

the trend somewhere in hotel design that

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

they thought it was a bad idea to install, like proper, full coverage doors and walls in hotel rooms? Who wants to see their travel partner take a poop?

[Devin Joseph]

I don't know what hotel chain needs

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

to hear this, but put the bathroom doors back. Put the bathroom doors back.

[Devin Joseph]

Not a curtain, not a sliding door.

[Sadie (Bring Back Doors)]

Why do you keep designing hotel rooms

[Advertisement Voice]

that don't have bathroom doors? What do you know of your audience?

[Devin Joseph]

Are you aware that people like privacy when they're in the bathroom? And some of those people online are taking action? So I spoke to a woman who's working to bring back doors.

[Sadie (Bring Back Doors)]

Hi, I'm Sadie and I created Bring Back Doors about seven months ago, which is a website dedicated to helping people find hotels that have proper bathroom doors and avoid hotels that don't have proper bathroom doors.

[Devin Joseph]

Sadie was radicalized after taking a trip with her dad.

[Sadie (Bring Back Doors)]

I was visiting England with my dad and we had one night left before heading to the airport. And we were staying in this hotel in London. We check in and we walk in and there's just no bathroom door. And it was just completely open. And the website photos, everything online had shown like a bathroom door. So we were not prepared for this room type to just be there.

[Devin Joseph]

So as Sadie points out, hotels are not always transparent about whether or not they actually have a door on their bathrooms. So her website puts hotels into a bunch of different categories depending on just how private the bathrooms actually are.

[Sadie (Bring Back Doors)]

So I do the zero privacy. That's when you have no door, there's no wall. Or sometimes a lot of hotels like this one, where they will have like a wall and a door. But then for some reason a window as well. So I put those all in the zero privacy category. And then I have 50% privacy, which is like the glass doors where you have walls and there's a glass door and you can create the privacy.

[Devin Joseph]

That was kind of your situation, man. You said adds a 50%. Like there was a, there was some opaqueness to the glass.

[Manny Noah]

Yes. It wasn't like you're fully. It's not transparent.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah, yeah. But you know, you can tell a person is in there. Oh, yeah, you can see there.

[Manny Noah]

It's designed to show you a sexy silhouette.

[Devin Joseph]

Yes.

[Sadie (Bring Back Doors)]

And then 80% privacy. And that's for like the sliding doors or slatted doors which are. Oh my God, those just annoy me because I know they cost more than a regular door. And I give that information because everyone has their own level of, hey, what is an acceptable door for me to have on vacation?

[Manny Noah]

I hate the hotel bathroom. That's. There is, it's a sliding door, but it's over the, like there's not, it's not sealed, so to speak. Yeah, well, yeah, it's just behind the gap where a sealed door could be.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah.

[Manny Noah]

And so in that instance, there's no privacy as well. If you're in there, you know, going number two or whatever. Like the noises, the smell, the. It's all, it's all in the room.

[Devin Joseph]

It's all in the room. And, and you can't escape. A lot of those places don't have, they don't have vents.

[Manny Noah]

Yes. Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

See down there got the bathroom vent so you could put that on to create a little bit of noise, a little bit of privacy. It's like your shit smells just all in the room now.

[Manny Noah]

Yep. It's horrifying.

[Devin Joseph]

Horrible. Society obviously noticed this was a problem and was trying to give, you know, people some tools to figure out whether or not their hotels have actual proper doors on their bathrooms. But I was curious as to why this is a thing, you know, why who is asking who's going in and saying, man, I really wish that bathroom didn't have a door. It'd be really nice if the toilet was just kind of out in the open. So after the break, I'm going to talk to a reporter who dove into this question of why all these hotel chains are getting rid of bathroom doors. Stay tuned.

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[Devin Joseph]

All right, we're back. As I mentioned before to break. I want to know why these hotels are getting rid of bathroom doors. So I called up Katie Dayton.

[Katie Dayton (Wall Street Journal reporter)]

I am a reporter at the Wall Street Journal where I cover marketing, advertising and also a little bit of design.

[Devin Joseph]

What were like some of the justifications and the people that you were talking to for sort of this new wave of bathrooms without proper doors? Because it's not like a as far as I know no one was going to hotels and being like I wish the toilet was out in the open, I wish the shower was out in the open. I wish the bathroom didn't have a door. Right? So like what problems are they solving by now doing this?

[Katie Dayton (Wall Street Journal reporter)]

Well, some would argue that you might not have said you wished for that. However, we do prefer the at least sense of space.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah.

[Katie Dayton (Wall Street Journal reporter)]

So hotels have been shrinking. There's many reasons for that. But the idea is if you start partitioning everything off the space, when you walk into the room, it just looks a lot smaller. And then the photos, it looks a lot smaller. So when you're, you know, browsing around, you're going to kind of like just pick the spot that's in your budget that looks like you have the most space and, and removing like that barrier of the door or even an entire room that automatically makes the space look a lot more aspirational. And you know, the. Everything in life, if you think about it, has becoming more open plan. That's the justification. And a lot of these hotels, you know, they've said like they don't actually get complaints. And I mean, I think there might be a few reasons for that. I think some people, you know, still find, especially in puritanical America, still find talking about bathrooms embarrassing. They might think that when they booked the room, it was kind of there in front of them and they didn't think to check it and it's their fault. They might just think in the first instance, it's a funny story and we'll, we'll live with that and we won't go here again. So, so they say there's no complaints. I think this kind of movement that Sadie started, I mean, I think what she hopes will happen is that more people will be calling up ahead of time. And refusing to book a room with, without the bathroom door is interesting.

[Manny Noah]

What she was saying too about the hotels not receiving any complaints. Because I thought about it and yeah, I've never called up a hotel. What am I going to do? The reason being, I think, because I know that they're not going to come and install a door.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah.

[Manny Noah]

Like on my trip, you know, so

[Devin Joseph]

like, hey, Manny and Mia, apologies. You didn't know that this room had the sexy shower. We're going to put up a curtain for you now.

[Katie Dayton (Wall Street Journal reporter)]

I think in terms of the real reasons this is happening, it all comes down to cost. And like I said, hotel rooms are getting smaller. What's happened is that the hotel chains, their margins are already pretty razor thin after the pandemic. There have not been the pick back up in business travel that there was before. And group travel, those are still down. Leisure travel travel is pretty much back to what it was now, but so they're still losing a little bit of that, that very large proportion of their income. And at the same time, construction pricing has gone up, labor costs have gone right up. So if they can create new spaces that involve, like, less concrete, concrete is very expensive and they don't have to hire people to come and build woodwork and a door, then that saves money. And it's, and it's all evened to the fact that if you enclose a room from natural light, you need a light bulb. And that might sound like pennies to these chains, but if you have a light bulb in every single hotel room for a bathroom, that means that that light bulb will break at some point, it will fail, and they will have to pay the labor of someone to come in and fix that light bulb. And it goes, you know, the CFO at these companies is going to be analyzing all of these tiny things and if they just go, well, why don't we just try and get rid of this one thing and see what happens. We can save some money and we can protect some of our profits that we've been losing thanks to all of the above. Plus the rise of Airbnb.

[Devin Joseph]

So there's your why, you know, sort of two things there, making the room look a bit bigger. Because you have this open concept, you know, like we call it on my side of town, the hgtv ing of the world, where everyone wants to knock down walls and make everything feel a bit more open. And then you also have this idea of like, okay, by removing these things, we no longer have to build walls in hotel rooms. Or, you know, putting up a glass partition is a lot cheaper than an actual wall. So it's like these little ways to cut cost that maybe, like you said, we're not asking for this necessarily, but if we go into a room, like, oh, look at this, like, you know, from the shower, I can sort of get a view of outside, you know, get some natural light in the shower. Now, it's not an enclosed, dark space. That's their justification.

[Manny Noah]

And I wonder if hotel reservations is becoming increasingly like a solo venture, like our family's opting for Airbnbs more and more larger groups. Yeah. In situations where you won't, you don't care if, if the bathroom is a glass partition because you're sitting there by yourself.

[Devin Joseph]

Well, let me say this. There's. And Katie mentions this in her article. When I, the last night I stayed in London, I was by myself. So I booked this place. It's called like Citizen M. There's very little sort of like hotel staff. You kind of check in by yourself and the rooms are very, very small, but you get like a huge king sized bed. But the bathroom is Just kind of like a little out there in the open, like the sinks out in the open. And then the shower is like, just like a glass partition. A toilet standing glass partition.

[Manny Noah]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

And it's like, yeah, for solo travel, that's perfectly fine. I don't need to hide, you know, for myself in the bathroom. Yeah, but it's the sort of thing. It's like, yeah, you would. That's not a group room or even like someone, one other person that even a couple would be tight in a room like that. So, you know, maybe that's some of the reasoning. But I noticed this when I was booking that same trip to London with my family and with my mom and my brother, and I was trying to book us, you know, one room, and I kept coming across these rooms where I was like, this room doesn't really work for a group. Right. And Katie mentioned that there's a theory as to why this is. And this may be another reason why hotels are now moving to these open concept bathrooms.

[Katie Dayton (Wall Street Journal reporter)]

It will come as no surprise that the hotels have never confessed this, but there is an argument that they do this because they can then charge for two rooms as opposed to double occupancy. So if you and your mom or your brother were traveling and you were like, oh, my God, I really don't want to deal with this bathroom situation. You go, shall we just get three rooms instead? And then that would be fantastic for the hotel. Right. They were going to get one fare for one room, and now they're getting three. I haven't seen any evidence to support that. That's sort of the more nefarious argument.

[Devin Joseph]

Katie mentioned that she sees this whole Dora situation as a reflection of a larger trend.

[Manny Noah]

It always is.

[Katie Dayton (Wall Street Journal reporter)]

It kind of goes back to why I'm interested in this story. And, like, you know, it is funny, right? Toilet humor. It's. It's always going to be a fun one to report, but it truly just does speak to how little corporations seem to take on the customer experience in terms of how they're operating their businesses and what we now put up with. And I first saw that when I came to the Journal. I used to report on customer experience. And at the time, it was. It was right before the pandemic and all these companies, it became like a buzzword. It became very trendy to say, we're customer focused, we're customer first. And we hired all these chief experience officers and chief customer officers. And I was reporting on that. And then, like, over time, that's kind of. I think I've anecdotally seen that die down. We've seen what's happening with the economy. We've seen this absolute. And I think it starts with the tech industry, this absolute decision to squeeze margins as much as possible and operate a business with as fewer people as possible. And now we have AI. And what's happening in the middle of that is, like, our experiences as people, like, trying to live in this world. It's just getting more and more difficult, the way these rooms are presented to us women, to accept them as something that we should be sort of grateful for. And it looks nice. And yes, there's lots of natural light, but it's just sort of every margin is squeezed. And until people outright riot and say, I will not be giving you my business, I don't think anything is going to change.

[Devin Joseph]

That was Katie Dayton from the Wall Street Journal and Sadie from Bring Back Doors. All right, so next up on Devin Design Week, I couldn't do a whole episode on bathrooms without talking about bathroom sensors and how much they suck. So, you know there's a lot of different sensors in the bathroom, right? You got the toilet sensors.

[Kalpen (Kalpen Suresh, host of Hearsay podcast)]

Oh, yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

Which God forbid you're ever in a public restroom.

[Sadie (Bring Back Doors)]

Mm.

[Devin Joseph]

And you gotta shit with a automatic sensor.

[Manny Noah]

Yep.

[Devin Joseph]

Cause the thing's going off while you're on the toilet. Yep. And that especially you're in the airport or some public place, those toilets flush. Yeah.

[Manny Noah]

You're feeling it.

[Devin Joseph]

Damn.

[Manny Noah]

You better hold on to something.

[Devin Joseph]

So if it accidentally flushes while you're on that toilet, you're getting splashed.

[Manny Noah]

You're feeling a lot of that.

[Advertisement Voice]

You.

[Devin Joseph]

You're. It's like you're at a water park. Right. That's one issue. And then a lot of times with those, when you actually wanted to flush.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Manny Noah]

It's not flushing because then it's like, all right. It's waiting for a certain amount of time.

[Devin Joseph]

Hey, man, stuff in there now. Let's. Yeah.

[Manny Noah]

I'm standing by the door, hoping, like,

[Devin Joseph]

all right, maybe then we got the sync sensors. As a black man living in this world, let me tell you something. A lot of times these sink sensors do not work.

[Manny Noah]

Nope.

[Devin Joseph]

For me specifically, it does not read my hands to the point where at times, if there are paper towels, I have to get a paper towel to hold in front of the sensor so that the sink can turn on so I could wash my hands.

[Manny Noah]

Really sad. The idea being the sensor is not really built to go off for darker skin tones. And I tested this once, actually tested this once with. With the paper towel. Dispenser sensor.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah.

[Manny Noah]

As. As you guys know, got brown skin, but on this side, it's a lot lighter.

[Devin Joseph]

Even lighter.

[Manny Noah]

Palm of your hands.

[Devin Joseph]

The palms.

[Manny Noah]

So what I would do is try to get a paper towel like this. And it wouldn't work with my back of my hand up. Then if I flip to my palm,

[Devin Joseph]

your wider side of your hand, the

[Manny Noah]

lighter side of my hand, the paper towel would come out.

[Devin Joseph]

Disgusting.

[Manny Noah]

So you have.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah.

[Manny Noah]

You're putting on white face essentially just to get.

[Devin Joseph]

I'm putting a white face on my hands for the sensors to say, oh, we can serve you, sir.

[Manny Noah]

Oh, we can, we can, we can rinse these. We're doing an act. This will do.

[Devin Joseph]

We allow.

[Manny Noah]

Streep.

[Devin Joseph]

We allow those hands to be washed. Wow. And it's sickening because, you know, a lot of times this happens post movie, you know, everyone's using the bathroom. I'm seeing all the white people real quick. Do, do, do, do, do, do do wash their hands. I'm standing there looking like an idiot. Put my hands. Not working, not working. Got to get the paper towel.

[Manny Noah]

The weights in the line are judging you.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah. What is this guy doing?

[Manny Noah]

This guy doesn't even know how to wash his damn security.

[Devin Joseph]

And then we have, you know, the paper towel dispensers.

[Kalpen (Kalpen Suresh, host of Hearsay podcast)]

Yep.

[Devin Joseph]

Same issue.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

Yep.

[Manny Noah]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

But even worse than the paper towel dispenser sensors are hand dryers. Okay. Half the time they don't work. But even worse, it's just like, especially if you get a long line of people. Right. We're talking sporting events. We're talking post movie pee.

[Manny Noah]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

A hand dryer is not an optimal way to move through that bathroom.

[Manny Noah]

No.

[Devin Joseph]

Okay. Because we're trying to move quick, people. Already washing your hands. The pressure is already on. Let's go. There are people waiting in line. There's usually not enough sinks for the amount of people in the bathroom. We're trying to move quickly. Then you get to the hand dryer. Oh, shoot. I got about four or five seconds.

[Kalpen (Kalpen Suresh, host of Hearsay podcast)]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

Dry these hands. Cause there's about six people in line behind me and we need to keep it moving. And then I hear, you know, this was in 2016, a big study comes out saying these hand dryers actually make your hands dirtier. You remember this?

[Manny Noah]

I think I remember this even, you

[Devin Joseph]

know, because there's levels of hand dryers.

[Manny Noah]

Yeah. Are we talking the air blades?

[Devin Joseph]

So that's. There's the Dysons, the air blades, which. Remember that innovation. I remember being like that.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yes.

[Manny Noah]

That's where you Put your hands kind of inside.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

Yes.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah, inside of like a.

[Manny Noah]

Between two, you know, two air bubbles.

[Devin Joseph]

It feels like it's sucking almost the water off your hands versus the traditional hand dryer which is blowing down wide open. Just blowing it on you.

[Manny Noah]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

But yeah, study came out so we thought, you know, when Dyson came out with those we were like, hey, this is next level handling the new age. Yeah, they're doing it faster. And their whole thing when they were selling those is hey, it's more sanitary.

[Manny Noah]

Sure.

[Devin Joseph]

But then there is the study that came out. It says Dyson's powerful jet dryers may spread 1300 times more germs than paper towels. Then I'm like, maybe I should not be using.

[Manny Noah]

Should go back to paper towels.

[Devin Joseph]

Air dryer. Yeah, but not every bathroom has paper towels. A lot of places don't do it because I think they're trying to keep the bathroom clean and people don't. You know, I will say people don't always throw the paper towels in the garbage, which is crazy to me because you don't have to take any steps. Yeah, it's usually the paper towels are directly above the trash can.

[Manny Noah]

You can kind of just let it waft over your wet head and fall just right in.

[Devin Joseph]

All right, so we're going to take a quick break and when we get back we're going to find out exactly why bathroom sensors suck and most importantly, answer the question, are they racist?

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Foreign.

[Devin Joseph]

We're back in the studio.

[Manny Noah]

I'm Annie.

[Devin Joseph]

I'm Noah Devin and we are joined by Charlotte Gartenberg, who is one of the hosts of an upcoming podcast called welcome to the Bathroom, which will be dropping this fall, in which Charlotte, you're going to be investigating the hidden social worlds that unfold behind bathroom doors. Is that correct?

[Sadie (Bring Back Doors)]

That is true.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

You can see the whole world from the bathroom window.

[Devin Joseph]

So, Charlotte, we talked last week because, you know, I heard you were working on this podcast. I told you we were working on a podcast episode about bathrooms and I was curious about bathroom sensors. So you went off and did a really deep dive.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

I know I have a tendency like you give me an assignment, I'm like, okay,

[Devin Joseph]

So how about we start here in regards to bathroom sensors? When did they become a thing? You know, when did they start installing them everywhere? Because there was a world, you know, when we were younger, where it seemed like not every place had a bathroom sensor for everything.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

I mean, not every place has a bathroom sensor for everything.

[Devin Joseph]

Still true.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

Which is we will, we will come to learn. Is good.

[Devin Joseph]

Yes.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

But the sensor technology came in the 80s. It was developed in Japan a little bit with help from players in the US but you're looking at Toto. So the development happens in the 80s. It becomes more widespread in the 90s, coming to the US so.

[Devin Joseph]

So like, why? What is the thinking behind having these sensors? Right. I imagine some of it is like you're touching less stuff in the bathroom. Right? We always like to touch less stuff. Less germs. Is that the main reason?

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

Germs? Ew.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah. Germs are gross.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

So there's three big reasons. Cost. Is it going to be cheaper. Spoiler alert, it's cheaper. Environmental impact.

[Devin Joseph]

Oh, yeah, the planet you're not keeping. If you're using the sink, you're not keeping it on if you're not there. You're only using it when you're hands are actually there.

[Katie Dayton (Wall Street Journal reporter)]

Yeah.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

And also these, the sensor sinks actually because of the way they're set up, they actually release fewer gallons per minute because the tech is there for them to release a bit more air with the water. So it actually can be more water efficient. So cost the environment and EU germs.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah, yeah.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

Cleanliness, or at least the perception of cleanliness.

[Devin Joseph]

Now let's break down the tech of how these sensors actually work. So here's Bill Strange, who is the president of operations at Toto, explaining the tech behind the toilets. And this is actually from an interview that Noah forgot that he did with Bill a few years ago.

[Bill Strange (President of Operations at Toto)]

So the sensor, it has a sending unit and a receiving unit. The sending unit will flash a little red light. It'll go out into the room and look for something to bounce back off of. And so as you approach that device, that light will emit. It'll bounce off of you. It'll then be caught by the sensor on the other side. The receiver receives it having bounced off of your body, and it will then know to prepare. And then once you get up and walk away and it sees that you're no longer there, it'll go through about a 4 to 7 second dwell time before it flushes.

[Devin Joseph]

Bill said sometimes these sensors will flush too soon if you move out of range of the sensor by, say, like scooting up on the toilet. Phantom flushes and lack of flushing can also be caused by limescale buildup on the sensor itself or even dead. Batteries in older sensors, Bill said, are just not as well calibrated.

[Bill Strange (President of Operations at Toto)]

If you've got a flush valve that might be an electronic sensor from 20 years ago, it's likely you may have a bit of a challenge. If you wore black clothing and the material was particularly fluffy, the signal being sent may not have been caught by the sensor because it wasn't coming back very well reflected off of the clothing you had on.

[Devin Joseph]

So hold on to that antidote about black clothing, because as it turns out, sinks use a similar system. So here's Charlotte breaking down how sync sensors work. And just a heads up, we're gonna be using the term laser here, but beam is a more accurate descriptor.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

It's sending out a laser, an active laser, and it's waiting for something to bank back, Reflect that laser back to tell it to go on. So if you put a mirror in front of that laser, it's gonna bank back. There are certain things that when that laser hits them, the light will be absorbed rather than reflected.

[Devin Joseph]

Like my black skin. I see.

[Manny Noah]

I see where you're going with this.

[Devin Joseph]

So the idea is that, like, you're saying there's a laser popping off that sink. It's hitting something, and then once it gets reflected back, it's like, turn on.

[Sadie (Bring Back Doors)]

Yeah.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

It's like, oh, you're here.

[Advertisement Voice]

Great.

[Devin Joseph]

So that's why if your hands, theoretically, are in front of that laser, you'll get some water coming down. As soon as you remove them, the water stops.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

Yeah. Well, they're set to go for a certain amount of time. Yeah. But basically what you said.

[Devin Joseph]

Gotcha. So maybe we just answer this here. Are they racist? Right. Is the idea that basically they're not built for black hands? So I'm just absorbing. All these lasers are just getting absorbed in my hands. They're not bouncing back.

[Manny Noah]

You got built in 5G now.

[Devin Joseph]

Exactly. I'm just getting synced lasers to the hands. Yeah.

[Advertisement Voice]

Nothing.

[Devin Joseph]

And then Noah's over there, and he's just. Pew, pew, pew. Right on back.

[Manny Noah]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

Cause he's got white hands. Yep. Is that what's happening?

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

Yeah. I mean, we can send people. We can send things to Mars. We can make rockets that can actually come back and be reused. There is no incentive to fix this.

[Devin Joseph]

So this is the sort of thing. Because this feels like one of those things where, you know, like, cameras were initially developed to not, you know, photograph black people. And it's like, at a certain point, people are like, well, there's a lot of black people. Maybe we should change the technology.

[Manny Noah]

There might be enough of them. That seems to be immoral.

[Devin Joseph]

Maybe we should make black people be able to be photographed. But, like, with the sensors, like, you're saying there haven't been any major Updates since the 80s 90s. Outside of, like, you know, some math.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

There's no incentive, really, to.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

To actually improve. Because people like me will just go get a paper towel. Like what? You know, we're not starting a movement.

[Manny Noah]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

Okay, so let's talk about the environmental impact.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

Okay.

[Devin Joseph]

I would imagine, if I had to guess, if we're gonna say one good thing about the censors, you know, it's like when they get presidential candidates who hate each other saying one nice thing about to say one nice thing about the censors, I would imagine that they are better for the environment. Because people go crazy leaving sink. The amount of times I walk into a bathroom and the sink is just running in a public place if it's not an automatic sensor. So I would imagine these are better for the environment. Is that true?

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

The answer is mostly yes. From what I found, if there's no phantom flushes and they are installed correctly, those are some ifs. Then, yes, they're good for the environment. But the other things really are better for the environment. Like there's a Stanford study. You want some quotes?

[Devin Joseph]

Yes.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

So for the hand dryers, according to this Stanford paper called Paper or Air, which method is greener from 2017, the air dryers really do use fewer resources. If you think about, like, what even what it takes to manufacture the air dryer versus what it takes to manufacture recycled or one, use paper towels, this thing that's on like this tepid hot air, or if it's a Dyson, this like jet thing, it's still going to be less and like the impact is

[Devin Joseph]

just going to be less on the environment is less.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

Yeah.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

And then as I said before, shit, nobody likes when you do that on podcasts. And also the faucets, they release less water. You know, fewer gallons per second are coming out of these sensor faucets than there are on the traditional. And of course what you said, which is just turn off the fucking faucet. Turn off the faucet, bro.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah, people love to leave the faucet. So for the environment, are they better?

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

Yes, yes.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

They're better for the general. They are better for the planet.

[Devin Joseph]

Now let's talk about cost. Are they actually cheaper? Are they cheaper to maintain than a normal sink? Are they cheaper in terms of just like in a lot of these cases, Thinking about paper towels versus hand dryers, we were saying before, with paper towels, the bathrooms get a little bit more messy because there's paper towels going around. So what did you find in terms of just overall cost with these things?

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

They're just straight up cheaper. But there is a trend of we want to design, and this is not just bathrooms we always want. Not we, not me personally, but there's this desire to design away the need for humans. If we can design a bathroom and it doesn't need a maintenance crew to come in there, then it will be cheaper overall. So the idea is like, okay, you invest in the initial capital spend and then you don't have to pay a human being who needs a job and to feed his or her family. You can tell where I come out on this, I Want bathroom attendance back. You don't have to pay that person to keep it clean. It's more cost effective. It's also more cost effective from an energy standpoint and it's more cost effective from a water use standpoint. So if you're building a public bathroom,

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

if you're building a bathroom, if you're a, you know, developer in a big

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

building, you're going to put these things in.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah. So they, like you're saying they cost maybe a little bit more up front than a traditional sink, but then it's like, hey, we don't got to worry about people leaving the water on. We don't need to worry about, hey, if we're just putting air dryers versus paper towels. That paper towels being all over the place, someone have to constantly clean it

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

up and you have to remember to buy them again.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Someone to stock them, you know. So another thing that we were talking about was this study that came out a few years ago about how hand dryers are actually disgusting and you shouldn't use them because you go through all this trouble washing your hands, then use the hand dryer and you're just getting them so dirty. And instead, paper towels are a lot cleaner. Or what I've started doing after I heard the story is just like wipe my hands on my jeans or something. Just shake it out because I don't want to get that nasty hand dryer hair all over my hands. So what's. Is that the case? Are they actually disgusting? Should we stop using hand dryers?

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

So all of these things are slightly disgusting.

[Devin Joseph]

Okay, right.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

All the sensor things are slightly disgusting, but they're not like, disgusting to the point of like, unless you're immunocompromised. Don't worry about it, man. Just like. But like, yes, it's a little gross. So the hand dryer thing is like a controversy. So in 2016, there was a Fortune article called Bad News. The Dyson Airblade is basically a virus catapult.

[Devin Joseph]

Oh.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

So there was this article based on a 2015 study with ties to the European Tissue Commission, which, you're welcome, is a real thing. But basically the study found that paper towels were cleaner because even the jet dryers, for two reasons are more gross. One, they spray, you know, icky particles. Icky being a technical term. Icky particles everywhere. And most notably at the height of a child's face.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah, I didn't think about the dome. Yeah, they're right at that.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

I never thought about the high level at it.

[Manny Noah]

Yeah, they're inhaling everything coming out, all the adult germs. Wow.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

But, like, honestly, I watched my kid when she was one and a half, pick a band aid up out of a puddle on the playground and eat it.

[Devin Joseph]

Hand dryers are the least of her. Yeah, right.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

She's fine.

[Manny Noah]

That's probably good. It probably made her stronger.

[Bill Strange (President of Operations at Toto)]

Yeah.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

So Dyson, after being maligned by what they. I don't know if they called it exactly this, but, like by big paper towel.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah, sure.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

They. They came back with their own campaign. They also funded a study to see if the Dyson airblade is actually dirtier. According to their study, it is not. But they did a whole. There's a commercial from 2016, 2017, just being like, actually, you've been informed incorrectly.

[Manny Noah]

Questionable reports are being commissioned and promoted by the paper towel and cotton roll towel manufacturers trying to make Dyson air blades seem unhygienic. One of the reports looked at the effectiveness of the different drying methods at removing bacteria from the hands, but the methodology is flawed.

[Devin Joseph]

Dyson called out that the participants never actually washed their hands during the study,

[Manny Noah]

but people washed their hands before drying them. And yet that was omitted from this bit of the report. Doesn't that seem strange?

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

So that's one. Icky particles getting sprayed around. But there's also the question of, like, how dry can you get your hands?

[Devin Joseph]

Yes. I was saying, especially when a line starts to be created behind you, there's a lot of pressure get out of there.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

So, yeah, if you can't get your hands totally dry. They actually did extensive studies on this, multiple studies of, like, okay, how dry do you get your hands from? The hot air dryer that recycles poop particles from the whole bathroom and just sort of like breathes on your hands. That shit's not good because you're not going to stand there long enough to actually get dry. Yeah, the Dyson blade's slightly better. Really? The paper towels, they're going to get your hands the most dry and that extra friction is going to rub off some more germs.

[Devin Joseph]

That makes sense. Charlotte also pointed out that some hospitals have actually moved away from using Sink sensors at ICUs due to cleanliness concerns.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

When you asked me, like, why did these things become widespread? And I said cost, environment and the perception of cleanliness. For the most part, none of these things is cleaner. Actually, most of these sensor things make bathrooms less clean. Visually, they're clean.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

Right.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

There's no paper towels anywhere. There's no poop in the toilet, no floaters hanging on, but they've done studies, particularly on the faucets. They basically trap bacteria. There's no way to properly clean out these faucets.

[Advertisement Voice]

The study released by Johns Hopkins Hospital that says those hands free faucets actually harbor more bacteria than regular faucets.

When compared to water samples from the old fashioned manual faucets, the electronic ones had 50% more bacteria growing in them and that bacteria grew much faster. Bova and his team believe the parts that make up the motion sensor technology are to blame.

[Devin Joseph]

You see, there are a lot of little grooves and folds to these plastic

[Advertisement Voice]

parts where bacteria can hang out again

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

if you're not immunocompromised, as it doesn't matter.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah, but in a hospital setting, every germ matters. So to recap, are the sensors racist? Yes. If they work properly, they are better for the environment and they can bring down costs, but they're not actually cleaner. So, Charlotte, thanks for joining us. Your new podcast, welcome to the Bathroom. Welcome to the Bathroom. Dropping this fall. Be on the lookout for it. For our last and final segment on Devin Design Week 2, we're going to have a conversation that would change how you see bathrooms. It's something I think about every time I use a bathroom that isn't my own and have that conversation. No, we're actually gonna call up your wife. Wow, you didn't notice?

[Manny Noah]

No, I'm shocked.

[Devin Joseph]

So we're gonna call up Julia Lindsey to set this one up for us. All right, Julia, thanks for joining us.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

Happy to be here for I think

[Devin Joseph]

the first time officially like live on the pod. You've called in, but I don't think we've had like a. I know I've been really a live conversation, which is.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

I've been waiting for my appearance.

[Devin Joseph]

Well, this is the topic to have you on for. So, Julia, why don't you set this up for us? Your. This sort of prompt that you give everyone at one point or another when, when you're with them at a bar.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

I think the best way to go about explaining how I'm feeling is really to like put you in my shoes. So I think, you know, let me set the scene. You are having a really beautiful weekend day and towards the end of it, you know, late afternoon, evening sun is starting to set. You're heading over to a family party. Partway through there. Invariably, no matter what, you're going to need to go to the bathroom. You're going to think about it. You've now had a couple highlights. You're going to need to go in There, you've had a really long day. So this is kind of like your first moment to yourself. You're excited, you're gonna get a couple reels in there. And if you're like some of us on this pod, you're gonna sit down, you're gonna take your time in there.

[Devin Joseph]

You're gonna sit your ass down.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

So you go in, you know, everybody's hanging out everywhere. You're pushing past some family members, some kids are playing tag in the living room. You're a little stressed out, pushing past. You go into the bathroom. Bathroom door opens directly to the living room. Of course, in this scenario, you get in the bathroom, you close the door, you look down to lock the door, and dread fills your body. I know that right now you're picturing a lock. You don't need to tell me what it is, you just need to hold it in your mind. Okay? But right now you're picturing a lock, and now all of a sudden, all hopes for this bathroom experience have been dashed. There's going to be no reels, there's no moment of peace. This is like a fully present in your body experience. For me, with the lock I'm picturing it means maybe I'm sitting down and I'm holding the door. I'm just a little worried because the only thing standing between me and the worst day of my life and my family's lives is this lock. And it is the most high stakes engagement possible. So for me, the lock is a really crucial part, especially of sort of a shared generational environment, a family party, any activity. But it can also ruin my life in a bar.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

Really take control of me anywhere I go. So now I'm really interested. Based on this, what lock are you

[Devin Joseph]

picturing if I'm holding the door? Well, I got two in mind. All right, there's the lock. That is just like a push button on the handle for the door itself.

[Katie Dayton (Wall Street Journal reporter)]

All right.

[Devin Joseph]

So you, you push it in. Theoretically, the door is locked. But you don't know because if you pull the handle down to test it.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

Correct.

[Devin Joseph]

The door opens up. So there's no way to test that lock.

[Manny Noah]

You need a friend outside.

[Devin Joseph]

Yes. To check it for you.

[Charlotte Gartenberg (Podcast host, Welcome to the Bathroom)]

Yes.

[Devin Joseph]

Pressed. Is it, Is it confirmed?

[Manny Noah]

You're dismissed.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

So that's one lock I got in mind. Another one is the one in my own bathroom at home. I've been living in this apartment now for 10 plus years. I don't know if I've actually ever checked to see if this locked works, but it's a fake luxury modern building. So it's like cheap, but it's like the handle is a little bit more modern looking. And the lock is like a. It looks like a pin.

[Manny Noah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

Very skinny pin.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

Yes.

[Devin Joseph]

Right behind the door handle. And you poke that in?

[Advertisement Voice]

Yep.

[Devin Joseph]

And theoretically I was supposed to lock the door.

[Manny Noah]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

Does it work? I've lived there, like I said, 10 plus years. I can't tell you.

[Manny Noah]

I've had that lock at my previous apartment. And we just operated under the assumption that these doors are not locked.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

Yep, yep. Yes. That is the exact lock I'm picturing. It exists, it seems only in like apartments built from like 2013 to 2019.

[Devin Joseph]

Yes.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

And it's like in some sort of pseudo modern design. They decided that a bathroom door was like way too clunky and push locks needed to be ended. It had to be a little pin. And they put it there. And it makes me really wonder how locks work and really what they're functioning and doing. If a simple pin is all it really takes to lock the door.

[Manny Noah]

Right. And with the pin, the push pin style of lock, even if the door is technically locked, it feels so flimsy that it feels like someone on the outside could just turn hard enough.

[Devin Joseph]

I don't trust it.

[Manny Noah]

Not that we're going to be in that many scenarios where we need to worry about that, but it just gives you a sense of security, I feel like. Or a lack of security.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

But so in terms of ranking my locks, I feel like there are really serviceable locks that are fine out in the world. And so to start with, and this is in order of preference, you have the push button lock. So this for me is really 50 50, because at some point in time we decided that it's not safe for a child to be locked in a bathroom. And I'm interested in that since it did happen to me a lot and I survived same. So we started making a lot of locks where you can't test them from the inside. The push button lock has like a 30% success rate of being something I can test from the inside. And you have to be in a home built prior to 2000 for that to work. But I do like it because I can maintain visual the whole time. So I'm still. I'm not having like a calm moment in there, really. But I'm okay with it. Cause I can watch it and I know it's locked.

[Devin Joseph]

Well, I will say depends on the push button. Yeah. Cause some of these push buttons, it is really hard.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

The Dunkin Donuts, push buttons, they're not going in for a while.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah. Cause some of them that you're saying it's a clear difference from it's out versus in. You know, I think I've been.

[Manny Noah]

I need to hear a click.

[Devin Joseph]

Exactly. Like a belly button versus an any belly button. You know, it's like that's how I think about it.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

I need to hear it click and if I test it, I need to hear it unclick.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yes.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

You know, I need to do it a couple times and look like maybe I am locked in there from the outside.

[Devin Joseph]

So if you're going to do a push button, make sure there's a big difference between locked and unlocked.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

Yeah, visually, yes, it's fine with me because it is seemingly the most common. And if I have to accept trash, I'll accept trash.

[Devin Joseph]

And for the kids, we'll allow it. We'll allow it for the kids.

[Manny Noah]

There needs to be some depth in the button.

[Katie Dayton (Wall Street Journal reporter)]

Then

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

from there I think we made a logical leap as a society and we said, okay, sometimes the push button isn't very clear. What if instead of a push button we had a doorknob or a door handle and where the push button would be. Instead you twist it. It's a little raised and you twist it. And that's actually quite nice because I think that you actually have about an 80% chance of that being testable from the inside. It's really more of like a modern day issue that they've made it something that a child could break free from.

[Devin Joseph]

Yes.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

Again, I want one where a child gets locked in the bathroom if they do it wrong. So you can do it. But the reason this one is still pretty low is that I am still spending most of the time on the toilet wondering if that is genuinely the

[Manny Noah]

right direction, you know, in a new circle of hell. Based on the hell describing already is that in my apartment, all of the locks, the door, the lock is locked if it's horizontal, but for whatever reason the bathroom is vertical. That's how you lock the bathroom. So you have to do a little game in your head every time you go to the bathroom.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

That's how you know, someone's cousin renovated your apartment. It's like there is no way that that's how that was supposed to be installed. And then I think really totally fine, totally passable to me are the type that you might see in sort of like an arena or stadium bathroom anywhere where it's a large bathroom with stalls, a lot of stalls, and that's sort of A system that you're going to get in there and it's going to be either like a metal rod or sort of a metal rectangle that you are just pushing to latch with, you know, some metal on the structure of the vestibule.

[Devin Joseph]

Yes.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

So those are fine with me. What I think can't enter this conversation because we can't be accountable to it, is that the co occurrence of this lock with a bathroom with insane gappage between the doors.

[Devin Joseph]

Yes.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

The gap is really high. You're going to be constantly monitored through that crack. It seems incredibly easy to install correctly. And as long as the actual vestibules are upright and working well, you know, 80% of the locks are going to function as expected. Those are fine with me. And then finally we have the deadbolt lock. Those are really great. You might see them at like a bar, you know, definitely at a dive bar where they're a little worried drunk people are gonna push too hard on the door if they don't know it's shut, where they're sick of replacing the lock. These are great because I know even like the Navy seals could not get in there if they needed to go to the bathroom.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah. And you can test the shit out of these.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

I can test the shit out of it.

[Manny Noah]

You really can?

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

I can monitor it. I can really yank at it.

[Devin Joseph]

You could shake that door down.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

It's excellent. And like hordes of people trying to use the bathroom could not get in. It's a very clear signal because, you know, we also need to think about the user effect on the outside. It's a very clear signal when you go to push on the door.

[Devin Joseph]

Yes.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

That's locked.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

There's no other option here.

[Bill Strange (President of Operations at Toto)]

Yes.

[Manny Noah]

Not to mention this style often has vacant or occupied. Yeah, well, triggers on it.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

No. Thank you so much. Because that does bring me to the elite tier, which is really deadbolt with the signifier on the outside.

[Manny Noah]

Yes.

[Kalpen (Kalpen Suresh, host of Hearsay podcast)]

There we go.

[Devin Joseph]

Yes.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

And this is. I don't understand. I don't understand why every business owner in the entire world, let alone homeowners, doesn't want this system in their house.

[Manny Noah]

It is why it should be subsidized by the government.

[Devin Joseph]

It should be in my home. It should be in every bar, club, restaurant.

[Manny Noah]

Zo Ron, listen to this. You want to get realistic.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

There's just no reason in a bar to be giving me a push pin lock or a push button lock when they make this. I don't understand.

[Devin Joseph]

You know what? I think this is a design problem where, you know, which we've been talking about this entire episode, us, the people, we need things because of utility. But these designers, at times they pick things because it looks nice.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

Correct.

[Devin Joseph]

But they act as if they are never going to be in our position. Right. As a plea using these things.

[Manny Noah]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

Okay. I get that the green vacant and the red occupied isn't the prettiest thing in the world, but who cares? It's a lock for a bathroom door.

[Manny Noah]

Yeah.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

But they surely make pretty versions of this, like pretty deadbolt lock.

[Devin Joseph]

We could get some nice fonts in there.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

I understand that some of this is a public versus private debate. Like obviously in my home, maybe I don't need the deadbolt with the indicator and it's just simply not safe. But I don't understand why the push pin lock exists at all, whether public or private.

[Manny Noah]

It feels similar to the Tesla door handles where they want it to be.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

Yes.

[Manny Noah]

They don't want you to see.

[Devin Joseph]

They don't want you to know that you can lock the door.

[Katie Dayton (Wall Street Journal reporter)]

Correct.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

There must be some sort of like American sensibility about locking the doors, admitting some sort of vulnerability. I'm about to blow this place up.

[Sadie (Bring Back Doors)]

Yeah.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

And like, yeah, I need this door locked. So apparently it's. It's ugly to have in there. I don't know. I'm really furious about it.

[Devin Joseph]

Something psychological happening here. Julia Lindsay, lock Aficionado that's probably my

[Manny Noah]

least favorite bathroom lock is the chain. And I have like an irrational fear of like, you know, sometimes the hole where the chain piece goes is. It's really worn out and you're really fidgeting to try to get it in there. And then I'm afraid that someone's going to open the door and rip my finger off. Yeah, wow.

[Julia Lindsey (Lock aficionado, guest)]

Yeah, wow.

[Manny Noah]

It's. I just hate that chain.

[Devin Joseph]

No such thing as a production of Kaleidoscope Content. Our executive producer is Mangesh Hadikadur. This show was created by Manny Fidel, Noah Friedman and me, Devin Joseph. Theme and credit song by Manny Fidel Mixing for this episode by Steve Bone if you had feedback for us or a question, our email is Manny Noah DevonMail.com or you can leave us a voicemail by calling the number in our show notes. If you guys love this show, please leave us a review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you are listening to us, write us a review. Tell us your favorite episode. We're gonna be back next week. Such thing.

[Kalpen (Kalpen Suresh, host of Hearsay podcast)]

Hey everyone, it's Kalpen. I'm inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with my podcast, Hearsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. Every episode I nerd out with amazing guests and dive into the best new audiobooks available on Audible. It's the book club for your ears. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart audiobook club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Advertisement Voice]

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[Sadie (Bring Back Doors)]

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