pocketlizard

The hostel we’re in has strange bathrooms. Instead of the usual chipboard partition things, they’ve built little rooms for the toilets and the showers. Along one side of the room are three little rooms for the toilets, and along the other side are three little rooms for the showers. A side effect of this is that each toilet and each shower needs to have its own light. For some reason, people always switch off the shower lights, but never switch off the toilet ones. This drives me nuts. Every time I’m in there, I switch off all the lights that are on (checking first that there’s no one in there, of course). The disposable plates and spoons that come with our free breakfasts and dinners drive me a little crazy too. The water fountains that just constantly have a similar effect, although not quite so bad. Yesterday I found one that was behind a fence. No one could get to all that water just running away down the drain, except the pigeon that was sitting on the spout. This is crazy! *twitch twitch*

But I’ve gone a bit off topic. The interesting question here is: why do people switch off the shower lights but not the toilet ones? I think it has to do with the doors. The shower doors open inwards, but because the toilets are in the way, the toilet doors open out. This means that the toilet doors are usually nearly closed, to be out of the way, while the shower doors are open. I think the open door makes the light (and fan) more noticable, and also redundant, as the room’s main light shines in. But the toilet ones are not visible/noticable (unless you’re a power-saving freak like me), and the toilets are dark inside if the light isn’t on. Any other theories?