Saturday 5 March 2022

Buddy, can you spare me 20 cents for the toilet?

 It is a beautiful, sunny day and I took a trip to the city of Cork. Spring is definitely in the air!

I mooched around for some time, just enjoying the feeling of freedom from all those restrictions, even though I continued to wear my mask, as indeed did a lot of people I saw on the street and in the shops.

And then it happened. I needed to go to the toilet. Not a problem, I thought. I knew that at the nearest mall (a somewhat fancy name for a restaurant and two shops on the ground floor and TK Maxx one flight up, but anyway) there were toilets downstairs. Last time I looked, entry was free, the lock had been removed, due to the pandemic, I thought. This time though, you had to cough up 20 cents in order to get inside. Now, I will admit that I always - or nearly always as it turned out- have a few 20 cent coins in my purse for just this purpose. Only, sadly, not today. So I stood there, jigging from one foot to the other and calculating how long it would take for someone within the hallowed toilet area to emerge and hold the door open for me. Lady luck - the patron of all would-be wee-ladies - arrived in the form of another woman who had the required coin. We bonded immediately!

My question to this mall and to all the other coin-spinning toilets is : who the heck is going to have the requisite small change? We nearly all pay by card not cash. That's what those malls wanted, remember? All easy peasy for them, no need to count money at the end of the day and have to bring it to the bank.

Use your imagination, shop and store managers. We are customers, we bring money into the city and into your premises and yet you don't think we merit the slightest consideration. And if you put someone in charge, someone who checks the toilets from time to time, it would give someone a job. In the above toilets, the locks on most of the doors did not work, so as you were doing a pee, the door would be pushed open and the usual "I'm so sorry"'s exchanged. Do we need this? Should we boycott these places until they have learned to provide a service which is as necessary as it is obvious? 

Don't get me started!

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