AIBU to feel uncomfortable with a male cleaner in women’s toilets while they are operational?

Many busy places have cleaners of both sexes cleaning the toilets, and they obviously do so during operational hours to keepmthem.clean and stocked essentials like toilet paper and hand soap.

A lot of places will put a notice on the door saying that staff of both sexes clean these toilets, presumably to prevent people like you from over reacting and complaining.

You're getting a lot of stick here but I would say trust your intuition here, particularly in a women's bathroom which as you say can make you quite vulnerable late at night.

Not sure what your options are - there are things that you can use to have a wild wee standing up or camping type things but honestly you'd probably be quite vulnerable faffing about with that late at night. If you're worried, I'd wait for another woman to go in and dash in and out whilst the other woman is around.

People supporting this OP need to read the entire thread and all of their comments/updates. She is unreliable and irrational to the point where I will no longer bother to answer her directly on this thread.

Yes, it is perfectly reasonable to be uncomfortable with a man in the women's bathroom. You can ask them to step out while you use the bathroom. My mum does it all the time. It's fine. They don't care. They just leave and come back after.

The OP has changed their story several times throughout the thread adding additional elements each time when not receiving the response expected, been confrontational and argumentative with any commentors questioning/criticising her multiple different stories and additions. If we are to believe her full story, she is the obsessive person behaving in a creepy manner not him.

Now in her latest update, we have a public bathroom in a random service station that has 25-30 bathroom stalls. Come on. Last week I went to Leeds for work and went through London Kings Cross station, have also recently visited Birmingham and Manchester city centre stations for the same reason. None of these places had even 20 stalls in a single bathroom.

We need to stop villanising all men for existing in our presence or all of our dads, brothers, sons and husbands will need to be accompanied everywhere in case they look sideways at a woman.

All sounds very odd to me. If you were lurking for 49 mins why do you think he was staring at you esp if you were staring at him. That’s more strange than his behaviour.
I’d go in, have my wee, quickly wash hands and out again without even registering a cleaner. If you were that bothered about a male cleaner in there just hold in til you get home.

I) Assuming all women share your POV is weird.

2. If you'd posted on the feminism, sex and gender board, you'd have got the response you were looking for. In real life, most women aren't hysterical about the presence of men or about toilet policing (and I say this as a rape survivor).

3. I'm a woman (vagina and womb at birth). I would have just ignored him.

4. The position of toilet cleaner in a motorway services is not exactly aspirational. I imagine the company has to take whoever they can get, male or female.

If the toilets are as busy as you suggest then I would be thinking thank goodness they employ a cleaner who takes the job seriously and does it properly.

How weird must you have looked pushing open cubicle doors to check for toilet paper!

Service station bathrooms are usually checked hourly, this is both to ensure cleanliness (you've said yourself it's busy) and safety (no one has collapsed or taken ill)

How long is your journey home that you need to use a public bathroom on the way? I avoid service station toilets at all costs.

Pushing brushes beneath cubicle doors and actually touching women's arms while mansplaining how taps work does sound like extremely odd/ creepy behaviour on his part.
I don't understand why most people's replies have been quite so hostile towards the OP.

Who is responsible for hiring the cleaners at this service station/ restaurant place? Is it a company contracted by the service station? or by the (chain?) restaurant? Are there other cleaners from the same company there, or is he now the only one?

OP: Why not tell us all where this place is - it's hardly going to 'out' you, especially if you've stopped going there yourself - so other MNers can go and check out this guy's behaviour for themselves?
That might give you a better idea - if they have the same gut feeling as you then it indicates that your intuition is probably spot-on.

Having recently found out more about how many men are hiding cameras in public toilets and changing rooms, and posting the resulting footage online, or just live-streaming it, I would be utterly unsurprised to learn that some of these men are now deliberately taking jobs that make it easier to set up such covert cameras.

Those taps that are a tap, soap dispenser and dryer all in one can be confusing.

It’s surprising how quickly the rolls can run out, especially when some women cover the seat with paper. I’d rather overzealous checking of the toilet roll holders than not enough.

That was one of my thoughts 😀 may have just saved money and not put taps in there at all

I can never work out how to use some taps in public loos.

plus who is on duty in the gents toilet showing them how to use the taps?

Perhaps they assume men don’t wash their hands?

😁😁😁

Exactly. You use the loo when you need to wee, not 40 minutes before. He obviously thought OP was a wrong 'un. If any of this is true!

Id give you posh new bathrooms 😀

not service station toilets though

plus who is on duty in the gents toilet showing them how to use the taps?

I thought men never cleaned anything, according to Mumsnet.

Such a strange thread. You waited 40 minutes late at night in a service station for a man to leave the toilets popping in and out to check on him then you’re watching him and staring daggers at him through the mirror and you wonder why he was looking at you?

The toilet was very busy as you said there was a queue for the sinks, what did you think he was going to do to a whole room full of people?

Yeah, but have you ever not been able to work it out without a man showing you?

The tap thing is weird.

Male cleaners wouldn’t bother me, but I’ve only experienced them when there’s been a sign on the door explaining that cleaning is taking place and that both male and female operatives may be cleaning. So you always have the option to wait until they’ve finished (which you’d have to do anyway if the toilets were shut for cleaning - it just gives those of us who don’t mind more options)

Dont use the loos then. Were you watching him too? You sound paranoid.

"What would you do?"
Nothing. He is doing his job. And you should do nothing either. Fancy complaining. That is just awful
Are you trying to get this man sacked?

🙄

Sometimes it's too pathetic for words.

Some shifts it's a man looking after the janitoring for the men's, women's, disabled and mother & baby toilets, plus bins and clean up throughout, other shifts it's a woman dealing with the same.

Are you expecting that the female cleaner is going to be threatening to the men standing at the urinals or that she's going to be threatened by them? Just wondering where you come down on that one, because no doubt there's a victim there too...