A Question of Ettiquette

[LucyDuke]

So if the following conditions are satisfied:
1. The door has a functional lock that is not confusing or difficult to use

Two out of three of the toilet rooms in my house have no lock. I can think of several examples of lockless toilet rooms in the houses of friends and family. When there is a lock, I will use it, but it's obvious to me that one must not simply assume an occupied toilet room will be locked. I knock on toilet room doors that I know have locks, just to be sure. It's not difficult to knock.

 

[MjM]

You need to lock, but you also need to knock.

 

[Hygro]

How loud are your locks that they are louder than (a) knocking on the door and (b) hearing the person inside say "I'm doing a poo!" through the door? I've never known a lock that causes more noise than knocking on the door.

Not only was the lock in my 100 year old house louder was louder than the description of night-time knock that I provided, but it also didn't even work in the warmer months.

 

[warpus]

Two out of three of the toilet rooms in my house have no lock. I can think of several examples of lockless toilet rooms in the houses of friends and family. When there is a lock, I will use it, but it's obvious to me that one must not simply assume an occupied toilet room will be locked. I knock on toilet room doors that I know have locks, just to be sure. It's not difficult to knock.

That's crazy, I've never come across a toilet without a lock except for in the ghetto. And when I'm in the ghetto I don't expect to have privacy when pooping

 

[Mise]

Most houses in London are over 100 years old and our locks work just fine.

Locks are pretty cheap dudes. £1.75 ($2.50 or so?) for a bolt that even I can put in.

 

[Flying Pig]

I don't usually lock the door - if you had to aportion blame it would probably be to the one who didn't lock it, but equally the good house rule that an open door means unoccupied is a good one. It was interesting however when I was in the wilds of Canada last summer, because a closed toilet means unoccupied - you don't leave those things open with all the bugs around!

 

[cbmgreatone]

Two out of three of the toilet rooms in my house have no lock. I can think of several examples of lockless toilet rooms in the houses of friends and family. When there is a lock, I will use it, but it's obvious to me that one must not simply assume an occupied toilet room will be locked. I knock on toilet room doors that I know have locks, just to be sure. It's not difficult to knock.

So far as I can tell, the conversation being had on this thread is about a hypothetical scenario between roommates who are using a bathroom with a fully functional lock.

Others have said basically the same thing, but if I am using a bathroom that doesn't have a working lock, I understand that my position is precarious and as such I don't automatically expect that my privacy will be protected. Moreover, I may decide to find a secure alternative bathroom or I might suck it up and use the unsecure one, depending on the urgency of the situation. If I were a guest in a house, especially one with females (I am male), I would knock unless I was reasonably sure their bathroom was vacant, but this would be out of guest/host deference, not out of the sort of neutral territory scenario that has been painted here.

I am 30 years old and lived probably the first two thirds of my life apologizing profusely for walking in on someone doing their business, but after a while I slowly came to understand the principles that I outlined in my first post. Locking the door is a dual purpose gesture:
1. It secures the privacy of the person inside
2. It communicates to people outside that the room is occupied

As such it is empirically better than relying on a knocking policy which
1. Places one's privacy in the hands of others
2. Does not clearly communicate that the room is occupied

If you want to get into different scenarios like personal bathrooms that can only be accessed by traversing someone's bedroom or bathrooms that don't have locks, we can have an entirely separate conversation about that.

The gist is that if there was a lock and it was not used, then the fault lies with the occupant.

 

[Cutlass]

Most houses in London are over 100 years old and our locks work just fine.

Locks are pretty cheap dudes. £1.75 ($2.50 or so?) for a bolt that even I can put in.

A lot of old houses have an old style lock that no one has taken care of in decades and they often don't work anymore.

 

[wilycoyote]

It is a common courtesy to knock. I have never lived in a house without locks on the bathroom doors, but it doesn't matter. Just because you can do something (in this case open a closed bathroom door) doesn't mean you do it.

I get the part about the ultimate responsibility is on the person in the bathroom, and unconsciously I agree (and thus, lock bathroom doors), but I don't think that socially anyone should forget to knock.

Maybe this is just personal experience. As a kid, perhaps like others, I walked in on my parents having sex because they didn't lock the door (undoubtedly out of carelessness). Ultimately, they failed to do their part, but I, never wanting to see that, also failed to do my part and knock. (This was when I was really young and didn't know that the noises that I was hearing was sex.

Ultimately, both are at fault, but it just seems to me that Person B caused the event more directly and is consequently more at fault.

 

[Commodore]

Person B is to blame. If the door is closed, you knock. Period. (Not all bathroom doors have locks.)

My thoughts exactly on the matter.

Person A. Who doesn't lock???

Someone who is having a.......bathroom emergency. Sometimes you absolutely have to get on the toilet that you may be able to close the door but not necessarily lock it.

 

[cbmgreatone]

Maybe this is just personal experience. As a kid, perhaps like others, I walked in on my parents having sex because they didn't lock the door (undoubtedly out of carelessness). Ultimately, they failed to do their part, but I, never wanting to see that, also failed to do my part and knock. (This was when I was really young and didn't know that the noises that I was hearing was sex.

That was your parents' room. It wasn't a public bathroom. The etiquette is entirely different.

Although I wholeheartedly disagree, I could at least come close to respecting an argument for the person who failed to knock SHARING responsibility for the occurence, but to argue that the person who failed to knock is MORE responsible than the person who failed to lock is just indefensible for reasons that I almost can't believe anyone should have to explain, much less argue for. Person A is most certainly more directly responsible. I have yet to read an argument that even scratches the surface of a possible reason why person B is more responsible.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Wouldnt the bathroom door be open anyways if nobody was in there unless the person was cleaning the back of the door.

 

[Cutlass]

Wouldnt the bathroom door be open anyways if nobody was in there unless the person was cleaning the back of the door.

Depends on the place. Some people leave the door open, others leave it closed.

 

[cbmgreatone]

Wouldnt the bathroom door be open anyways if nobody was in there unless the person was cleaning the back of the door.

To be honest, this is a principle I find perplexing. I have never lived in a house/dorm/apartment in which the convention was to leave the bathroom door open when vacant. When I leave the bathroom, I generally close the door behind me. Hence, I enter vacant closed restrooms on more than a daily basis. I guess I missed the memo that said closed equals occupied. Fortunately enough, I got the one that said locked equals occupied.

 

[wilycoyote]

That was your parents' room. It wasn't a public bathroom. The etiquette is entirely different.

Although I wholeheartedly disagree, I could at least come close to respecting an argument for the person who failed to knock SHARING responsibility for the occurence, but to argue that the person who failed to knock is MORE responsible than the person who failed to lock is just indefensible for reasons that I almost can't believe anyone should have to explain, much less argue for. Person A is most certainly more directly responsible. I have yet to read an argument that even scratches the surface of a possible reason why person B is more responsible.

1) The etiquette isn't different for a child. Everywhere is "public" for a child.

2) The act of entering the bathroom (the same act that created the issue being discussed) wasn't carried out by Person A. It was Person B. That is why I said it was more directly the fault of Person B.

3) Etiquette isn't universal or inherent. It is due to social norms. I came from a society (or at least family) that believed knocking was as essential as covering one's mouth when coughing or not farting at the dinner table. We can all be reasonable and disagree since we aren't arguing facts.

 

[cbmgreatone]

1) The etiquette isn't different for a child. Everywhere is "public" for a child.

2) The act of entering the bathroom (the same act that created the issue being discussed) wasn't carried out by Person A. It was Person B. That is why I said it was more directly the fault of Person B.

3) Etiquette isn't universal or inherent. It is due to social norms. I came from a society (or at least family) that believed knocking was as essential as covering one's mouth when coughing or not farting at the dinner table. We can all be reasonable and disagree since we aren't arguing facts.

1) If the etiquette isn't different for a child, then the example is not an entirely valid analogy, which I know isn't exactly what you were trying to make anyway. The example is a specific situation under specific circumstances.

2) It is about personal responsibility. Either you can lock the door, a 100% reliable (under the circumstances listed) primary preventative action that involves you taking responsibility for yoursef, or you can expect others to knock on the door, a secondary failsafe action that involves expecting others to be responsible for you. What could be a more appropriate barometer for measuring the correctness of an etiquette question than first determining whether each individual takes responsibility for what they can be reasonably expected to take responsibility for? To imagine that knocking is the primary prevention method and locking the secondary is backwards by any standard.

3) Etiquette isn't, strictly speaking, universal or inherent, but the principles of etiquette are derived from intuition, experience, potential consequences etc. Certain principles of etiquette have been honed to the point that they are fairly well and universally accepted, whether written or not. The best we can do is arrive at principles that are intuitively correct. In that respect, they can become more like facts in that they can be objectively superior or inferior under close examination. I can agree to disagree, but I can't abide a bad idea continuing to masquerade as a good one.

I am pretty certain I can't contribute anything new to this thread at this point. I apologize if there's any perception that I am overplaying my hand on this one. I would like to think that I am very polite to people in general, but I simply don't have it in me to be polite to bad ideas, and the idea that the universe is more responsible for your privacy than you are for your own is a sensationally bad idea, and I don't think that is a statement that needs to be qualified as merely an opinion.

Edit: I suppose there is a dynamic of perceived victimhood re: person A. There is, thus, an element of pity that exists for the person whose privacy was violated. I submit that this is an overemphasized dynamic that adds to the confusion of answering this question in a morally "correct" way. I guess people think that the situation sucks more for person A than person B and therefore are more inclined to blame B. That is about the only way I can account for the B votes. The victimhood principle has to be secondary to the personal responsibility angle because person A is a victim of their own failure every bit as much (if not moreso) than the imagined failure of person B.

 

[LucyDuke]

I don't usually lock the door - if you had to aportion blame it would probably be to the one who didn't lock it, but equally the good house rule that an open door means unoccupied is a good one. It was interesting however when I was in the wilds of Canada last summer, because a closed toilet means unoccupied - you don't leave those things open with all the bugs around!

If a closed toilet means unoccupied...

So far as I can tell, the conversation being had on this thread is about a hypothetical scenario between roommates who are using a bathroom with a fully functional lock.

Yeah, we went through this earlier in the thread. More broadly than the specific scenario in the OP, one cannot assume every toilet room is lockable, so a habit of knocking is safe.

Wouldnt the bathroom door be open anyways if nobody was in there unless the person was cleaning the back of the door.

We also close the door (and open the window) in case of stinky.

 

[bhsup]

I am not going to bother reading back to see if I posted previously, but clearly the responsibility on a closed bathroom door lays entirely on the person wanting to enter the bathroom. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about this. If it is closed, FRAKKING KNOCK. To do otherwise is to show the world you are a rude, socially inept moron.

 

[ZeletDude]

Yeah, seriously the person should knock if the door is closed.

 

[cbmgreatone]

I am not going to bother reading back to see if I posted previously, but clearly the responsibility on a closed bathroom door lays entirely on the person wanting to enter the bathroom. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about this. If it is closed, FRAKKING KNOCK. To do otherwise is to show the world you are a rude, socially inept moron.

To me this post is a complete and utter facepalm. To post something like this is to show the world you are a ru... ah screw it, I'm not getting sucked into what has regressed into an absolutely childish thread. I guess some people will just never get it.