Could someone please explain what I saw, today, in a gentlemen's restroom?
A friend and I were having lunch at a restaurant. The ladies’ room was closed for repairs. A (male) waiter checked to make sure that the gents’ room was vacant, and then waited outside while I used it.
The urinals were filled with ice cubes. I was too shy to ask either the helpful waiter or my (male) friend why this was so. Were the ice cubes there to prevent urine from splashing around, getting on the walls and floor, and hitting either the man urinating or his neighbors?
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I asked my husband, who is a Certified Dude™ and he said,
“I’ve only seen the pink or white urinal cakes. The ice cube thing is new to me.”
I don’t know but find it horribly funny.
no I’m pretty sure it’s that the ice melts and takes the urine with it down the drain. So many guys don’t bother to flush those things, that fancy restaurants in particular toss ice in their urinals. the thing is it’s become ever more rare as modern urinals now have sensors that flush automatically when you leave. I can name 2 places where you can still see the wonders of ice in the porcelain. A hint for you ladies who are chomping at the bit to investigate men’s rooms. Don’t eat the big mint!
@stanleybmanly is correct. Enough men do not flush urinals that many establishments will put ice in them to “flush” the urine down the drain as it melts. I have only ever seen this in bars. I have never seen it in a restaurant.
Wow. I learned something; I’ve never heard a guy mention it and it seemed so so funny to me. So you guys just wee wee on the ice…...........................OIK
That ice is cold. Brrr.
Maybe they should simply plant trees in men’s rooms.
I’ve heard of iced tea but iced pee??
@MollyMcGuire You’d be surprised at the juvenile games and contests guys will engage in inside restrooms of places serving booze. Most of them involve some variety of accuracy contest, but then there are the distance matches. You never want to trip and fall in an alleyway behind a bar.
I’ve never seen ice in urinals like that.
Well..this certainly counts as a learn something new every day moment. haha
They are not ice cubes they are deodoriser blocks or urinal mints. They are used to disguise the horrible smell of urine.
No we know about the big mints. We’re talking genuine ice, though it’s usually of the consistency of bar ice, somewhere between crushed and cubed. The ice also prevents the stench from concentrated urine.
Ice is cheaper than the pink breath mints used in urinals and you don’t have to go in and change out the strainers when they are spent. The ice also cools the urine which reduces the smell when patrons are too drunk to flush the urinal.
No, @NerdyKeith, some places do put ice cubes – and specially made ones, I think, because whenever I see them they are much smaller than normal-sized “rocks” drink cubes – and they’re not (generally) crushed ice, either. Though I have also seen that.
As @stanleybmanly notes, they don’t show up so much these days in more and more recently built or renovated places. And dives never had them anyway, since those places don’t much care about flushing, or smell, or sanitation, or soap, or paper …
I’ve never seen or heard of ice in the urinal until today, either, but it appears to be fairly common.
I re-posted the link above.
Urinal mints? :-/
Well..why would I know these wonderous mysteries of mens restrooms, fascinating. haha
Ive seen it many times before, but it’s not what I would call common. As others have said it “flushes” for you. You don’t want to pee on it directly or it could spray back on you.
@Coloma There’s nothing minty about a urinal mint, it’s about as minty fresh as the scent packs in an airplane bathroom.
I haven’t seen the link, but I used to see ice in urinals in older bars in rural Texas. They would keep the beer bins filled with ice during the day, and at the end of the day they’d dump the ice into the men’s urinal (which was actually more like a trough with running water).
I wonder if the person who came up with the idea felt flushed with success. Ahem…
I call it a pube cube, always see a couple on there, some short & curlies shed throughout a day’s pissing.
Ice cubes result in less splash-back when you have a forceful stream.
That is also where I dump an unwanted drink someone insists on buying for me.
We stick our drinks in the ice to keep them cold while we are peeing.
I personally don’t like this because it kinda takes all the fun out of playing “clean the pan” a game where you attempt to wash any debris in the urinal down the drain using the equipment god gave you.
@rojo I’ve played that game too, but with ice in the urinal, the game changes to ‘how big a hole can I melt in the ice’!
Because urine is better chilled.
In a restroom full of inebreated men, guess the fate of any bug or spider traversing the walls or floors. I remember my shock as a boy upon entering by mistake the ladies room in a downtown theater. It blew me away. It was a VERY plush lounge more comfortable and better appointed than my living room. I couldn’t believe it. I’d never seen nor imagined such a thing. Everything in a mens room is either porcelain, stainless steel or tile. You can clean a mens room with a fire hose.
@stanleybmanly You can clean a mens room with a fire hose.
Intentional pun?
A lot of drunks were once dreamers of careers in the fire dept. And no. I hadn’t noticed the opportunity for punning
Should ‘t they be called fire peeple then?
To counter @stanleybmanly‘s experience, one summer (1972, I think) I had the opportunity to work for the Worcester (Massachusetts) Parks Department between college semesters. A lot of the job included mowing and general grounds work, of course, but the most hated job – and therefore always mine, whenever we went park-to-park on initial cleanups, because I was “the kid” – was cleaning the rest rooms. Worst of all was that job on a Monday morning. And the absolute worst of the worst – at every park, and without exception – was cleaning the women’s rooms.
Men’s rooms were nasty enough, for reasons that men (and their wives and housekeepers) already know: bad aim and “directional carelessness”, diffusion of the stream (it’s simple fluid dynamics), and general apathy about leaving things in good order, since it’s not “their own space”. The men’s rooms were always “messy” and wet and randomly soiled in different and sometimes interesting ways. But the women’s! Oh, those women! It was as if they set out to deliberately trash the buildings. Every. Single. Time. I never understood it. We’re talking “monkey house antics” here. Never “interesting”, just horrible, disgusting, and apparently deliberate.
The only good thing about that job was that after I’d spend whatever time was needed in cleaning the rest rooms the crew I was with would give me a long, long break afterward to re-compose myself (and clean up).
After marriage, years later and in different parts of the country, I would only nod my head and comply when my wife and I would be out somewhere and she “had to go” ... which meant it was time to “go home” or to our hotel room, because she did not want to use a public women’s room for any reason. I got that.
These toilet questions are like a maxiflush, seriously taking the piss ;-}
^ lol Do you have to go now @stanleybmanly , you know holding it isn’t good for you. haha
You just get worse and worse. One of your animals should hide that jug from you. You are a mischievous drunk.
@stanleybmanly Haha..well, without opposing thumbs they can’t pick it up. :-p
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