​One of the funnest experiences you can have in a public restroom is when someone suddenly rattles the door to your stall, or door to the bathroom if you’re in a single shooter, hoping to find it unoccupied. Many doors appear closed when they are in fact slightly open, or are actually closed but are not locked/occupied. While this jarring experience could help you on your way, more than likely it will inspire feelings of agitation at being bothered in a precarious state, or guilt at taking too long in said state.
 
From the other perspective, one of the least fun experiences you can have in a public place is when you head to the restroom, only to find your rest thwarted by another. For example, at a nice restaurant, there is a certain emotion associated with the long walk to the restroom, the locked door or stall, the pause, and then the decision to either make the long walk back to the table (and ensuing repeat of the trip), or to casually “hang-out” near the restroom, which is hopefully near the kitchen door so that you get to acknowledge the staff while you wait. Since the invention of cell phone apps, this sort of waiting is far easier to endure, but it’s still less than optimal.
 
If you’ve ever experienced this “access denied” when searching for relief, you know what fun it is to anticipate whether the door is locked or not upon approach. Are there any telltale signs that the restroom is occupied? A light under the door? How badly do you need to go, and where is the next restroom going to be? These are all good questions.
 
One potential solution, and something that I think about more often than the average bear I’m sure, is the restroom indicator. This was made famous by airlines, and might even be used elsewhere. It’s a simple device that indicates whether a restroom is occupied or not by attaching a signal to the door lock. So when the door locks, the sign says stop. When it unlocks, Simon says go. Imagine if every stall door or single restroom had this technology? How much time would we save? Ok, maybe not time. But think of the satisfaction of always knowing when you can go, when you got to go.
 
TL;DR
You should carry around a sign with one of those plastic suction cup things with you that reads “In Use” for when using public restrooms.

Back in the day, I used to work on the road. I traveled around mapping utility assets (electrical, telephone, cable, random fiber optics, etc.). Everywhere the lines went, I went in my snow white Jeep wrangler with a lift and aggressive tires. I worked in densely populated urban areas and in wide open forgotten armpits of America. I made pretty maps and talked to a lot of locals. I ate out a lot. I never had to make my hotel bed. It was pretty awesome.

Today, I work at a desk. It’s a nice desk, to be sure, and it doesn’t have to drive in the mud nor in the snow (I do that on my commute to and from work tho). I love my job, as it still involves pretty maps and talking to people. And it also involves lots of code, which makes me even happier these days.
 
The biggest difference between my old job and my new “career” is probably the restroom. Today, the restroom is always in the same place and I can get there in about 30 seconds from my desk, anytime I need it. Back in the day, I was anywhere from a few minutes to an hour away from a proper restroom, and that’s if I new exactly where the closest restroom was (I often didn’t). If I needed the outdoor restroom, it was usually easy enough to find, but sometimes there was an additional unnecessary excitement component to this activity (one time I was in the woods using the outdoor restroom, and out of no where a dog came up and tried to sniff/snuggle into my pocket where I had probably been keeping some crackers, it startled me so badly I nearly…. well, you get the idea).
 
Anywho, my point this morning is that now I’m a father, and there are like no baby changing stations in public men’s restrooms! Do you know how many times I’ve had to change my baby girl on the floor of a restroom? A huge pile of paper towels spread out beneath her like some sort of reverse snow-woman? The funny thing is, this is exactly what I was researching four years and two months or so ago. I feel like times are changing, because there are more outlets for peoples’ voices to be heard, and some of those voices are dads.
 
I guess that’s it for now. Happy Father’s day to all the dads out there. Time for a potty break.