Baby Change - toilet priority.

[coffeeforone]

Fully prepared to be told AIBU.

I was in my local supermarket this afternoon, my 6 month old had a poo explosion at same time my almost 3 year old decided he needed a wee.

There was a sign on the men's loo saying it was out of order - please use baby change.
Supermarket was busy and, about 5 men were queueing in a single queue for the baby change and the separate disabled loo. I joined the end of the queue and waited for a couple of minutes. Toddler was getting desperate so I then took him into the ladies (no queue) and he used the loo there.

Came back out fully expecting the guy that had joined behind me in the baby change queue (who was now at the front) to let me back in at same place - but he refused, and said I'd need to wait again as he couldn't wait any longer and I should have just changed my baby in the ladies (the floor was pretty dirty and he'd had a poo explosion so I felt a contained baby change was required), by this time there were another 4 males in the queue, who pretended I was invisible.

WIBU to be really pissed off?

wee not see

Also think it should be illegal to totally close a gender toilet (if a premesis is required to have them) just close off one/two cubicles at a time!

I agree with you, but where does that leave men who need a poo (or even maybe older men who aren't disabled as such, but maybe find it difficult to use a urinal because of weak/painful legs, balance problems etc.)?

Many men's toilets only have one cubicle anyway.

It does seem ridiculous that there were presumably several cubicles available and unused in the ladies' toilets whilst a number of people were queuing for one toilet that also contained the baby-change facility.

The sensible thing to do would surely have been for OP to have gone in the ladies' with the toddler, checked that there were no women in there on her way out and then given the nod to the men to use the ladies'. If a woman had turned up, the men still in the queue could just say to her "Sorry, the men's toilets are closed and a mum desperately needed to use the disabled toilet/baby-change room - we've all been waiting a while, but we'll be really quick and then you can have yours back!"

Any complaints, she could have been asked to direct them to the store customer services desk and, before she got back from there, the men would probably all have finished anyway!

I suppose the only difficulty there would have been if any of the men had been unable to use a standard toilet cubicle - but at least the able-bodied men would have left and made the queue shorter for them.