Simon Rimmer's inadequate facilities

[boccajunior]

Lulabelle went to TV chef Simon Rimmer's new restaurant and was not happy with the unisex toilets

twitter.com/Lulabel06994981/status/1548085200407576582?t=MhkXwg2YEqjmfQiebhyTfQ&s=19

Just been to @simonrim's lovely new restaurant where I was disappointed to discover gender neutral toilets. Men and women awkwardly shuffling round each other wondering if they were in the wrong place. Yeuch.

Rimmer's been trying to defend them all afternoon but it's not been going well due to the fabulous, intelligent women making him look daft.

The lovely Maya Forstater has given up her afternoon to look into the building regulations and codes and it appears that she's unearthed some problems.

(warning long thread from Maya)

twitter.com/MForstater/status/1548348265791307781?t=zOcwHQP704sbKaRhGJE5Lw&s=19

Hopefully now he'll be forced to create single-sex spaces.

It looks like total bullshit making stuff up on the fly.

He read the original customers tweet and rather than ignore it he decided to reply. Then misjudged how his audience would take his his tone and and got push back with people agreeing that they preferred single sex.

If he is a good business man who used a talent to financed a new build, his capacity for seating customer's is a key element for a sucessful business.

What is his maths on his cash return on 1 seat so,
1 brunch,
1 lunch,
1 early and
1 late dinner by
× open days by
× average occupancy by
× profit of a service?

You can bet he has a number and all kinds of controls to make sure that he is hitting targets.

If the decision was not taken lightly he should know his obligations as an employer.
For hygiene reasons I would expect that staff have single sex changing facilities including lockers and single sex toilets away from customers.
So for the funder/ employer he has to provide for space for each sex, and do the maths that is at any given time the split will not be 50/50. An additional toilet or changing space is a reduction in 1+ seats.

If the decision was not taken lightly he should know his obligations as a provider of services and have worked through the in's and
outs's of the reasons for the additional space needed for disabled customers or more importantly how much room walkways and one extra unit takes from his sales floor. There is no point in having them if the customer can't get to and from their table.

He could try not to bullshit on twitter about some non-existent religion which requires a single sex, single occupancy unit because women(men?) are not allowed to stand together at the sinks.

If anything that comment suggests that a senior staffer decided that they should be given access to the faculities for the other sex and the space savings made for a more profitable business.

No, normal men don’t do this. It’s quite messed up that you think they do.

Yep the toilet is centered in the unit. If i remember correctly it was explained to me as the design is based on the minimum space to sit but more importantly the minimim work space needed either side for a plumber to plumb in the toilet into the enclosed space and do maintance when the cistern was originally at celing hight.

Plus there is the minimum door ratio, width of door + space to go in turn & close the door

Not your Nigel, aye?

Hey normal men, please can you post a handy, user-friendly guide as to how women can tell you apart from the rest, without having to find out the hard way. Thank you.

Well if you think it’s normal in your circles maybe ask your dad.

You can bet he has a number and all kinds of controls to make sure that he is hitting targets.

One of the points that sold unisex loos in schools was the idea that pupils spent less time hanging around in them. I wonder if this is part of his motivation - customers will want to get out of them as quickly as possible and back eating and drinking?

Whatever his reasons, I can believe Rimmer really thought girls and young women welcome the idea of sitting on the loo while men are just the other side of the door. Unless he doesn't employ women and isn't bothered if women eat at his restaurants or not?

At work with perfectly lovely professional colleagues,both m and f, we had private enclosed cubicles that were for all. We decided between us, for the comfort of all, to unofficially allocate some toilets as male and some as female. So much nicer. Almost unanimously agreed. However,
that didn't stop a couple of the men from using the women's as they would readily admit, the men's toilets were grim. I really can think of no reason that any woman would want to share with men. I am sure most men would be uncomfortable sharing with women and girl strangers. A pp hit the nail on the head, we need to make it a men's problem. Then something will be done.

Love this idea. Thread: twitter.com/volewriter/status/1548661621878292485

Basically restaurants say upfront what their toilet arrangement is. If it's mixed sex, just say so and all the folks who think this is great and iNcLuSiVe can go there. The rest of us can take our custom elsewhere

Hey normal men, please can you post a handy, user-friendly guide as to how women can tell you apart from the rest, without having to find out the hard way. Thank you.

There's no way to tell. That's why even if many/most men are basically decent, all men should still be excluded.

Correct.

I know I’m missing the point but is the mirror placement bothering anyone else?

twitter.com/simonrim/status/1548295811817123846?s=21

Haha. You can share the mirror as well.

If I want a fast food experience I am not going to a posh place. Part of the meal is being in the ambivalence, I want time eating and chating and to chill in the loo if needed.
I like this:

but it would not be on my mood board for fine dining. Speed just breaks the pace and is the difference between a extra drink or two or going home.

I suspect that he hoped that his customers were just too posh to judge places by their toilets.

And that its been a looooong time since he was at a random "nice place" where he was told hope nobody ordered yet, I've been to the loo, we're off 😯

No matter how posh the place, a little bit of me is always going to rate "least amount of loo roll needed to wipe the toilet seat" 🤷🏼‍♀️😀

In 50 years of using women's toilets, I've often had to wash blood off my hands. I'm a heavy bleeder, I'm clumsy, and that stuff is sticky, it doesn't just wipe neatly off with a bit of loo roll.

I'd really prefer to not have to do that at sinks next to men....and I'd bet they'd prefer that too!

May be the angle picture taken but mirrors seem a tad high.

Many restaurants have unisex toilets but they must have the sink in the cubicle and open onto the corridor

@Icimoi me neither, I'm not saying the major leaks never happen, it's just they are not that common. Proper unisex facilities with the sink in the cubicle would be better in these circumstances because the unfortunate person (my dp has a different kind of leak due to a medical condition) doesn't have to be at a communal basin whether single or mixed sex

I hope this bankrupts him, he's an awful misogynist.

What a plonker

I hope the police have been following Maya's tweet, Rimmer's insistence on mixed toilets in his restaurant puts me in mind of Chuck Berry.

One thing that no-one ever mentions is how some women take their drinks into the toilets (placing it on the windowsill or a basin) to avoid the drink being spiked while they're away.

How does this work if the handwashing space is communal mixed-sex and any man can walk in there too? The answer is it doesn't.

The reasons why most women want same sex toilets is irrelevant and we shouldn’t have to justify it.
For some women it will be periods. For others continence issues, breasts leaking, morning sickness, religious reasons.

Personally when I was a teenager navigating periods, tampons and the acute embarrassment of that I’d have felt mortified if men I didn’t know heard me changing my protection. When I was pregnant and had Hyperemesis Gravidarum I really valued going into a loo where I knew other women would hopefully understand and where if I needed help because I felt faint I wouldn’t feel vulnerable. Now I don’t have either of those issues but I still don’t want to have my pants round my ankles with a male in the next cubicle or at the sink. Chances are they’re just ordinary blokes but that’s not the point.

The thing is none of the reasons matter. What matters is that we’re saying no and that should be enough.

The thing is none of the reasons matter. What matters is that we’re saying no and that should be enough.

Yes. This.

When DS and DD were babies and I was out and about and needed to use a public loo I had no qualms about pulling the pram into the cubicle and leaving the door open so I could have a pee without being out of sight of my child and stuff on the pram.

No chance of ever doing anything like that if blokes were sharing the facilities.

Just gonna wait for the mixed loo defenders to tell me I'm the only person in the universe who's ever done that and hoe awful it is to have a pram in a cubicle anyway...