We’re in a budget crunch. Last I checked there was an unwillingness to pay for more than 1 custodian. The restrooms get dire.
edit: we do have 2 non-staff ungendered single seater restrooms, but I can’t see anyone approving retrofitting the existing multi-stall restrooms in a way that costs money, arguably decreases safety, and increases pressure on custodial staff.
The attendant doesn’t have to be a custodian. The member of staff with the office closest to each bathroom is now responsible for at least checking that bathroom once an hour. It’s a budget crunch. Everyone has to do their part!
And if that doesn’t fix the budget crunch within a week or two, the bathrooms are now being checked.
You’re devoting at least 15% of the library sysadmin’s time to bathroom monitoring (the bathrooms are a long walk from the offices) assuming the bathrooms are empty each hour. You’re also requiring them to knock on each locked bathroom door and get a response (currently you can check for people passed out by glancing at feet under stall doors). There’s also the overhead of figuring out who is on bathroom duty when the sysadmin is out sick or working from home.
The budget crunch is at the state level, the library itself has very little ability to change it. We’ve already reduced subscriptions and services and staff to a skeleton crew.
Tough times require tough measures. Either you find what the students do in there acceptable or you don’t. If you don’t, someone needs to check, and if not that sysadmin, then it’s going to have to be someone even further away.
One alternative would be to have the restrooms be locked and to be unlocked on request. How key management works with that I leave open.
This would be ideal if there was a suite of unitary WCs, because one key per room per person.
Not ideal in the case of emergencies, I grant you, but then, you don’t want to be using a filthy restroom in an emergency either, so I guess go the whole way into that and put a chemical toilet somewhere outside nearby. OR the old outhouse with hole in the ground if you can’t stretch to that.
Oh! I thought you were suggesting a way to implement unitary WCs.
As a way to handle the current bathroom issues, the current solution for my floor is one staff member has IBS and checks in on the restroom approximating their gender about once every 2 hours. The other floors and restrooms have their own idiosyncratic methods.
The problem with that is not the students, or the layout, communal or otherwise, but the unwillingness of the institution to pay a toilet attendant.
We’re in a budget crunch. Last I checked there was an unwillingness to pay for more than 1 custodian. The restrooms get dire.
edit: we do have 2 non-staff ungendered single seater restrooms, but I can’t see anyone approving retrofitting the existing multi-stall restrooms in a way that costs money, arguably decreases safety, and increases pressure on custodial staff.
The attendant doesn’t have to be a custodian. The member of staff with the office closest to each bathroom is now responsible for at least checking that bathroom once an hour. It’s a budget crunch. Everyone has to do their part!
And if that doesn’t fix the budget crunch within a week or two, the bathrooms are now being checked.
You’re devoting at least 15% of the library sysadmin’s time to bathroom monitoring (the bathrooms are a long walk from the offices) assuming the bathrooms are empty each hour. You’re also requiring them to knock on each locked bathroom door and get a response (currently you can check for people passed out by glancing at feet under stall doors). There’s also the overhead of figuring out who is on bathroom duty when the sysadmin is out sick or working from home.
The budget crunch is at the state level, the library itself has very little ability to change it. We’ve already reduced subscriptions and services and staff to a skeleton crew.
Tough times require tough measures. Either you find what the students do in there acceptable or you don’t. If you don’t, someone needs to check, and if not that sysadmin, then it’s going to have to be someone even further away.
One alternative would be to have the restrooms be locked and to be unlocked on request. How key management works with that I leave open.
This would be ideal if there was a suite of unitary WCs, because one key per room per person.
Not ideal in the case of emergencies, I grant you, but then, you don’t want to be using a filthy restroom in an emergency either, so I guess go the whole way into that and put a chemical toilet somewhere outside nearby. OR the old outhouse with hole in the ground if you can’t stretch to that.
Oh! I thought you were suggesting a way to implement unitary WCs. As a way to handle the current bathroom issues, the current solution for my floor is one staff member has IBS and checks in on the restroom approximating their gender about once every 2 hours. The other floors and restrooms have their own idiosyncratic methods.