Airplane Bathrooms

By Debi Harris

The airline powers-that-be are at it again. I wrote recently about an airline that is planning to start charging customers by the pound, passengers and their luggage. (So much for wearing clothes with 157 pockets so we can cram everything in them and not be charged for excess baggage. “Mrs. Harris,” the ticket agent, noting my petite 5’3” frame, will say in amazement, “How can you weigh 369 lbs.?”

Now, one of these geniuses (our motto: packing passengers like sardines since 1980) has come up with another way to torture us. In order to pack in more seats in these bullet-shaped vessels, they’ve come up with the idea of smaller bathrooms. (You can tell they’re men; no woman would ever opt to make a bathroom smaller.) I’m surprised they haven’t come up with the idea of designing planes like the inside of trams - seats for the elderly and disabled and poles for everyone else to hold on to while we stand for the whole flight.

I feel claustrophobic in airplane bathrooms as it is. I have always tried to avoid these small, germ-ridden spaces unless the flight is just too long to avoid it. I’m not an exceptionally large woman (anymore, not counting the 157 pockets full of my ‘carry-on’) and I feel like I have to open the door to turn around (which can get quite embarrassing).

Has anyone ever used the bathroom on an airplane and thought to themselves, boy, it sure is roomy in here? Me either. Or worse yet, next thing you know, they’ll be installing pay toilets. Maybe I should have kept that thought to myself; wouldn’t want to give them any ideas (at least not for free). Stewardesses (excuse me, flight attendants (our motto: making passengers uncomfortable since we were stewardesses)) will be required to carry copious amounts of change so passengers can get the coins to open the bathroom doors. Of course, being an airline, they’d be required to charge a ‘fee’ for making change for the bathroom, plus a usage charge, and replacement charge (if you use more than two squares of toilet paper). How would they know how much toilet paper you use, you ask? They’d have a counter installed on the toilet paper roll that would click off each square and alert the attendant on duty for that flight. (He or she being the one who lost the bet on how much toilet paper passengers used, collectively, on the previous flight). If you use more than two squares, he or she will be required to wrestle you to the ground and frisk you for change.

And speaking of change, everyone would get smart and start carrying their own in order to avoid the airline ‘change fee’ which would add a heck of a lot of weight to the plane. Maybe they’d take their cue from Samoan airlines and start weighing everyone and charging by the pound to make up for the lost revenue of passengers bringing their own change. It’s a slippery slope (or in this case, cloud).

And speaking of bathrooms, I was in the bathroom on a long-distant flight not too long ago and it still had a place for men to dispose of razor blades! Do men even use those things anymore? And even if they did, they would never be allowed to board with them. I can’t imagine a man brave enough to shave with a sharp razor blade while the plane is in the air. After the pilot hit every air pocket between Dallas and Pittsburgh, the poor passenger would emerge from the bathroom with his entire face covered in bandages. The flight attendants would probably mistake him for a terrorist and subdue him with a hard roll.

And speaking of hard rolls, the food on airplanes leaves a lot to be desired. My last meal consisted of mystery meat, mystery vegetables and a hard roll. Does anyone have any idea where the airlines get their food? I’ve seen men loading boxes from the back of trucks onto the planes. Is that really the best place to shop? Out of the back of a truck? My mistake was eating it. Hence the necessity to use the postage-stamp-sized facilities.

Airlines won’t be happy until we are officially packed into the plane like sardines, quite literally. I can just picture it. The pilot taxis up to the gate and an employee with a gigantic can opener peels the top off with an equally giant ‘key’ in order to let us out. Sheesh!