Train Station Toilets - Interesting Interaction

[Connor]

So to give some context, the main toilets at Edinburgh Waverley train station were closed a couple of years ago for refurbishment, and temporary toilets in a Portacabin type structure were put in place. There were only a small number of temporary toilets, and due to Covid-19 and social distancing, staff were only letting a certain number of people in at a time, leading to big queues. There was a thread elsewhere here about it at the time.

Anyway, today I was interviewing someone at work, and one of the questions is about dealing with difficult situations and/or confrontational people. And the guy we were interviewing used to work in customer services at the station. And he used his experience during Covid supervising the toilet queue as one of his examples of dealing with difficult situations and that he dealt with angry and frustrated people.

He said something along the lines of: "You would be there, and some guy would come up, but there would be another five guys already waiting. But sometimes they really needed to go, you could see they really needed to go. And you had to assess the situation, be honest with people. Sometimes you had to go against procedure and just let people go first if they really needed to."

Obviously I was dying to ask more questions, but absolutely could not.....however my imagination is running wild about what the guy might have seen, what he might have witnessed, what decisions he had to make, really fascinating stuff!!

[Lee]

Hope you gave him the job, so you might have future opportunities to delve!!

[bodgyuk]

I agree with Lee, hope circumstances arrange themselves that you can probe further.

[Connor]

Hope you gave him the job, so you might have future opportunities to delve!!

Yes he'll be starting soon, I'll have to engineer a way to bring it up in conversation without sounding too creepy!

[Keith]

I remember this so well some great sightings then.
After the refurbishment as well there is less toilets the urinals have decreased from about 20 to 8 with the 4 cubicles. Great when the market and festival are on.

[Lee]

I remember this so well some great sightings then.
After the refurbishment as well there is less toilets the urinals have decreased from about 20 to 8 with the 4 cubicles. Great when the market and festival are on.

So can you see queues from outside?

[Connor]

I remember this so well some great sightings then.
After the refurbishment as well there is less toilets the urinals have decreased from about 20 to 8 with the 4 cubicles. Great when the market and festival are on.

So can you see queues from outside?

During the refurbishments, definitely, there was a long queuing system, separate queues for men and women snaking around barriers. At busy times could easily be 30 to 40 guys queuing. Now, especially during festival time, it does get busy, very occasionally see queues outside but moreso in the actual toilets you occasionally get a back up of people. And often get queues at the cubicles especially as there are only four in total.

[Lee]

30 or 40... wow!

[Fred]

When toilets are refurbished, they sometimes attempt to abide by the "potty parity" rule. Women need more time and they need more toilets than men, so with a little wall-shifting they enlarge the ladies' room - and reduce the size of the men's room. Fewer toilets and urinals for the males. I saw that happen a few years ago at a rest area on an Interstate. Prior to the renovation there were three toilets and four urinals, and afterwards there were two toilets and three urinals. I probably should have hung around there for a while to see the action when they got really busy.

[Adrian6970]

Thanks for sharing. Last week I discovered that the toilets at a station near me were closed for refurbishment and the alternative was portaloos in the carpark. Fortunately I wasn't desperate and was okay until I reached my destination.