That being said, I certainly felt like one last Saturday night when I couldn't figure out which bathroom I was supposed to use.
Choosing the correct bathroom is not something that I usually have difficulty doing. While random guessing will already make me correct fifty percent of the time, my ability to read words and understand basic pictograms nearly always allows me to choose the right door and avoid shame and embarrassment.
Unless, that is, bar or restaurant owners decide they want to get creative.
The particular bar in which I had chosen to indulge myself that evening was one such establishment. This place (which shall remain nameless in order to protect the guilty) is, in general, a very good pub/restaurant/bar and one of the places in Brno that I enjoy. This was my second time there, after only visiting once before for a single beer.
They happen to serve excellent beer at this place, so I dove in and enjoyed a few of the brews on offer, enjoying each one more than the last. There were two results of this:
1 – I was a slightly inebriated. Or, as the kids say, I was tipsy, buzzed, woozy, lush, three sheets to the wind, halfway in the bag, singing the complete works of ABBA, etc.
2 – I had to pee.
So, when it was time to break the seal, so to speak, I got up and headed to the bathroom.
That's when the confusion started.
There were two doors, which is customary for Earth bathrooms. Behind one of those doors was a land of couches and pot-pourri; behind the other a world of urinals and stench (which is the one I wanted).
But, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out which one was which.
It wasn't my fault though, despite my rather less-than-sober condition. The problem was that someone decided they wanted to be clever, and instead of simply writing the words 'men' or 'women' on the doors, they put up little silhouetted pictures of people instead.
One of the people was wearing a hat. The other had an umbrella.
Which one was I supposed to be? Maybe I was the hat, after all, gentlemen in the previous century wore hats. But maybe I was the umbrella, which is more than just a little phallic. I honestly couldn't figure it out, and spent a good minute or two standing in front of these two doors, desperately hoping to solve the riddle and earn the right to pee, like the dumbest puzzle game of all time.
This was not the first time this has happened, either. There are far too many places that try to get all smart and clever with their bathroom signs, and end up confusing the hell out of everyone. Once, I went to a cute, trendy café. The men's room had a picture of a mushroom on it. The women's room had a picture of a flower. Maybe the idea was that women are pretty like flowers, and men grow in shit? Whatever the idea, it was a bad one.
Of course, not all bathroom problems are related to idiotic attempts to be cute. There are language difficulties, for instance. When my girlfriend and I went to Ukraine a couple years ago she went to the bathroom, only to come back and ask, “Am I the 'M' or the asterisk?” (Hers was the asterisk).
And some people are just really, really drunk and/or stupid. When I owned a bar, our bathrooms had, painted quite largely, the international symbols for men and women on them. And still, about once a week, I had to guide a very confused person to their bathroom of choice.
If you own or manage a bar, restaurant, pub, café., shop, whatever, feel free to get as fun and creative as you want, but leave the damn bathrooms alone. If I can't figure out which bathroom is mine in two seconds, while drunk, you've done it wrong. Please, for the sake of people everywhere, make it easy for us to pee.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, mine was the hat.