Traffic Flow

[marcmagus]

Consider a mixed-sex set of people who occupy the same space for an extended period of time. Assume there are three restrooms attached to the space, one labeled Men, one Women, and one Men/Women. Each can accomodate a single person at a time. Assume that all the people involved obey the restrictions, and that everybody involved has a non-ambiguous identity of either Male or Female.

If you are going to occupy a bathroom for a relatively long time, should you use the single-sex bathroom for your own sex, or the mixed-sex bathroom? Your goal is to minimize the impact on the other occupants of the space in terms of their ability to use a bathroom with minimal wait.

Feel free to make the simplifying assumptions that the sex mix is approximately even and that there isn't a sex bias to frequency or duration of visits to the bathroom. Also feel free to assume that people will preferentially use their single-sex bathroom if it is available, and go to the mixed-sex bathroom only as an "overflow". Do these assumptions change your results? Can you get a more favorable result by relaxing them (changing the behavior of the other people)?

Yes, I think about these things...

Tangent: Why do we specify gender on single-person bathrooms, anyway? I can accept cultural mores against people of different sex being in the same bathroom at the same time, but I can't see what possible use there is when the occupancy limit is one.

Comments

[miintikwa.livejournal.com]

If I knew that I was going to be in the potty room for a while, where a while > than normal bathroom time, I would probably elect to use the mixed gender room, out of politeness's sake.

[marcmagus]

Yes, but why is that the more polite decision? Do you agree with me that polite = minimal average time other people spend waiting to get into a bathroom or are you using a politeness which = minimal chance that someone will have to use their second choice of bathroom? Or do you have some other basis for politeness?

If you agree with me, why does using the mixed-sex room lead to the desirable outcome? (My intuition agrees, but I haven't succeeded in backing it up with anything remotely resembling a proof yet; nor even a good persuasive argument.)

[miintikwa.livejournal.com]

For me, politeness = minimizing the chance that someone else would have to use their 2nd choice bathroom.

And the arguement that I use is my mother. This will probably sound silly, but here goes.

If *I* use the mixed sex bathroom, which might make someone of an elder generation uncomfortable, there is less chance that the elder person will be confronted with that choice. Now, granted, you were not stating that a person of the elder generation was there- but that's the basis for my choice.

If I were at a party with my Mom, I'd use the mixed sex bathroom so the regular bathroom was open for her.

See?

[marcmagus]

Your mom would be uncomfortable using a bathroom which might be used, before or after—but not while—she uses it, by a man? That's fascinating, since I'm quite certain that's not the case in the absence of any markings upon the door (think of homes). I wonder what it is about making it explicit that the bathroom is for both sexes would cause discomfort with it?

[miintikwa.livejournal.com]

I don't know that she would be- I'm just saying that there is a chance that it might make her uncomfortable, and I would rather remove that chance.