Bathroom Attendants

[YankeeFan]

Hate them.

Don't want to have to pay a buck to take a ****, and rather than making a place seem classy, it makes 'em feel like a strip joint.

I always feel like they're keeping track of how many times I ****, too.

Bathroom attendants. The best way to ruin my $45 steak and grease-rimmed glass of Chateauneuf-du-Pape is having some guy watch me pee and offer me a paper towel. First of all, I don't wash my hands—Hemingway never washed his hands—and second, who are you? A guy in a cummerbund? What have you created today? What have you made with your mind, your mettle, besides awkward silence? Business Insider's Henry Blodget is right: Balthazar's bathroom attendants should be eliminated. But we'd go a step further: Eliminate Balthazar.

For the uninitiated/indifferent, there's this restaurant in SoHo called Balthazar—it looks just like "a rustic bistro" in Paris but actually it's on Crosby Street and it seats 200 people and serves well over a thousand $40 entreés each day. Anyway, Henry Blodget—he's the CEO and founder of Business Insider—so he was eating breakfast at Balthazar with Nick Denton—he's the CEO and founder of Gawker Media—and Henry went to the bathroom and realized that he hated the fact that the bathroom attendant was just staring at him pee and then expected a tip for making him feel weird. Henry goes back to work and writes a blog post about how restauranteurs should "eliminate" bathroom attendants and Keith McNally—he's the owner of Balthazar and a bunch of other important restaurants that are all popular and all the same—he reads Henry's post and decides to fire the bathroom attendants!

http://gothamist.com/2013/11/04/should_we_fire_all_the_bathroom_att.php

 

[poindexter]

First of all, I don't wash my hands—Hemingway never washed his hands

That's disgusting.

 

[Batman]

I bet the bathroom attendants' union, Local Nos. 1 and 2, is not going to happy about this.

 

[Boom_70]

The only place it bugs me is Douglas International Airport in Charlotte. Makes no sense.
It's the only airport that I can think of that has bathroom attendants.

In restaurants I'm always entertained by the array of toiletries that the attendant has.
Will add an extra buck for cloth towel and right mix of hot and cold water. A third Washington if back of suit / shoulders are brushed while washing hands.

 

[Steak Snabler]

First of all, I don't wash my hands—Hemingway never washed his hands

That's disgusting.

Hemingway also blew his brains out.

 

[michael_badley]

The only place it bugs me is Douglas International Airport in Charlotte. Makes no sense.
It's the only airport that I can think of that has bathroom attendants.

In restaurants I'm always entertained by the array of toiletries that the attendant has.
Will add an extra buck for cloth towel and right mix of hot and cold water. A third Washington if back of suit / shoulders are brushed while washing hands.

The reason, sadly and stupidly, is so the airport can get away with not paying janitors. Yes, those annoying men and women enthusiastically asking how your flight was, have agreed to clean the john for your tip money. Pretty cheap on CLT's part. If not for the Bojangle's in terminal B, I'd hate flying there because of that.

Sometimes you just want to **** in peace.

 

[MTM]

I feel bad for the person having that job, so I'll usually toss a buck his way. But, being an older dude, I may have to pee three or four times during a restaurant or bar visit and that gets expensive.

 

[MTM]

When we visited Moscow, porta potties were a business. Someone owns a small clusters and charges a couple rubles per use.

They were the cleanest portable johns I've ever seen.

 

[3_Octave_Fart]

I am more inclined to tip coat-check or valet.
I don't have much of a problem with bathroom attendants in five-star places.
Not crazy about someone else holding a towel I am about to use to dry my hands, though.

 

[Steak Snabler]

I'm old enough to remember pay toilets in airports (JFK I know had them as recently as the mid-1980s) and a lot of gas stations in large cities (notably L.A.) have pay restrooms. At least then you have a reasonable expectation the facilities will be clean and/or not be a hangout for homeless people.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

I was in a strip club years ago and this drunken meathead comes into the bathroom, does his business and then washes his hands... The attendant quietly steps up, puts a towel near the guy's hand and then steps back. The guy wipes off his hands and throws the towel on the sink. He then sees the tip bowl and looks at the attendant.

"What? You want a tip? Maybe if you'd wiped my ass..."

Classy...

 

[wicked]

A lot of times I'm cashless, so I feel like a **** when I can't leave a tip.

 

[Smasher_Sloan]

Just feel sorry for them. Going to work for eight hours of ****ter duty.

 

[Steak Snabler]

A lot of times I'm cashless, so I feel like a **** when I can't leave a tip.

That's symptomatic of ATMs now dispensing nothing less than 20s (or in the case of casinos, 100s). If the ATM is in a place where employees work for tips, they should dispense 5s.

 

[Dyno]

The ladies room at Balthazar had an attendant, too. Didn't like that much.

 

[joe]

Read "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" for a look at a bathroom attendant from the man's son's point of view. Hideous ****ing narrator, indeed.

 

[Batman]

The ladies room at Balthazar had an attendant, too. Didn't like that much.

No ****. You have any idea how hard it is to install a toilet cam when there's somebody keeping an eye on things?
I mean, what?

 

[KYSportsWriter]

The ladies room at Balthazar had an attendant, too. Didn't like that much.

No ****. You have any idea how hard it is to install a toilet cam when there's somebody keeping an eye on things?
I mean, what?

Creeper.

 

[Flip Wilson]

The only place it bugs me is Douglas International Airport in Charlotte. Makes no sense.
It's the only airport that I can think of that has bathroom attendants.

In restaurants I'm always entertained by the array of toiletries that the attendant has.
Will add an extra buck for cloth towel and right mix of hot and cold water. A third Washington if back of suit / shoulders are brushed while washing hands.

There was a bathroom attendant at the airport in Cancun several years ago. Or maybe he was just blocking the paper towel dispenser until I gave him some money. Either way, it was awkward.

 

[Riptide]

I don't need my shoulders brushed by a stranger in a men's room. Creepy.