So full disclosure here, experience creates change. I have Ulcerative Colitis. That means, well, there are times when I just have to go. It is always a massive turn off to me when I walk into a small business and these cold-hearted killers deny access to their bathrooms because they can. Why would they do that? Don’t they care about the humans?
That’s how I used to feel, anyway.
Well, then I opened a laundromat. Then another, and then another. My entire perception of the issue changed. It still took me 10+ years to be worn down, but they won. They pooped all over the place, enjoyed each other’s bodily everythings, and, worst of all, they shot up every kind of drug imaginable into their lungs, veins, toes, whatever.
My brother, who owns 2 laundromats and myself, we changed the white lights in our bathrooms to blue – to make veins harder to see. In both of our cases across multiple laundromats, the blue lights were stolen and replaced by white lights. That sounds like a joke. It isn’t.
We have a client who had someone pass away from a drug overdose in his laundromat’s bathroom. It took the county coroner hours to get there, because they are so busy. He had to put an out of order sign on his bathroom for hours and hours because he had a dead body in there.
So who are these “they?” “They” are not our customers. I know, because I have proof. As soon as I gave in and joined the ranks of the cold-hearted bathroom locking monsters, the problems disappeared. The bathrooms stay clean. Noone hangs out at the laundromats peddling drugs or soliciting money (or worse). The stores are welcoming.
So do yourself and your attendants a favor. Lock your bathroom doors. You won’t regret it.