this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
273 points (98.6% liked)

Not The Onion

17000 readers
921 users here now

Welcome

We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!

The Rules

Posts must be:

  1. Links to news stories from...
  2. ...credible sources, with...
  3. ...their original headlines, that...
  4. ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”

Please also avoid duplicates.

Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.

And that’s basically it!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

A video recently shared on various Chinese news and social media sites shows a set of timers installed above a row of toilet cubicles in a female washroom, with each stall getting its own digital counter.

When a stall is unoccupied, the pixelated LED screen displays the word “empty” in green. If in use, it shows the number of minutes and seconds the door has been locked. ‘We won’t kick people out midway’

The original video was reportedly taken by a visitor who sent it to the Xiaoxiang Morning Herald, a state-run local newspaper.

'We won’t kick people out midway’

The original video was reportedly taken by a visitor who sent it to the Xiaoxiang Morning Herald, a state-run local newspaper.

“I found it quite advanced technologically so you don’t have to queue outside or knock on a bathroom door,” the paper quoted the visitor as saying.

“But I also found it a little bit embarrassing. It felt like I was being monitored.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Glowstick@lemmy.world 62 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I mean, what problem are they trying to solve? And is long-sitting people really the main cause of that problem?

If a tourist destination is frequently winding up with people waiting for an open stall, and if the majority of people are in the stalls for what is considered a normal amount of time in their home country, then the actual problem is that the place simply doesn't have enough stalls and needs to add more

[–] lurch@sh.itjust.works 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

if it shows hours someone likely died in there again. i think it's okay to knock and check on them.

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

I like your casual use of "again" here 😁

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well they either died in which case checking doesn’t help, or they didn’t in which case checking doesn’t help either.

[–] Timecircleline@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well if you check and they died you can get the body out and then the stall is free again.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Whether you make a policy of knocking on bathroom doors, based on that reasoning, should be based on whether you’ve actually experienced a stall shortage caused by undetected death in the stall.

[–] optissima@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

To not even consider being stuck on a toilet for that long, I'm jealous of your non-IBS digestive tract.

[–] Twentytwodividedby7@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I used to work at a movie theater and someone died once in the bathroom. So that is probably why

[–] Glowstick@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

That doesn't sound likely to be the reason. That's an extremely rare event that doesn't need a regularized solution. And visible timers is pretty much the least useful way to address that problem, instead of using standard emergency pull cords or even just an alert sound that rings after X minutes.

[–] Jessica@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My guess is it's for the women's restroom because when bathrooms are busy, most women just wait for a stall door to open and don't always bend over to look under the doors to see if they're even occupied. It's also probably hard to see from a distance if the stall is occupied or not and nobody wants to be the one to shamefully walk back to the line because they had to get closer to check.

[–] Glowstick@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Nah occupied/unoccupied status lights have already been in existence for a while. The new thing happening here is that they've added a visible stopwatch counter

[–] Jessica@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago

Oh I see! Yeah that is a bit strange