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Comment by InsideOutSanta | Hacker News Reader

Why does it suck? It's a negligible amount of money for the person using the toilet, but the revenue is enough to pay for people to maintain and clean the toilets regularly. Being able to use a clean toilet for what is essentially a rounding error in your budget at the end of the month seems like a worthwhile tradeoff.

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Back in school when my allowance was 5 euros a week, even 50 cents was prohibitively expensive for me to go to the toilet. Even today I refuse to use the two euro toilets and I'm not the only person walking up, seeing the price, and turning around.

This stuff is not priced to be a reasonable convenience, but to be a better alternative to soiling yourself in public. The most insulting part is paying 2 euros to pee into a smelly urinal and getting a 50 cent discount code for the nearby fast food stand as a courtesy, because I haven't spent enough apparently.

I remember as a poor student, having to pay the equivalent of 50 cents felt like robbery. Today with a steady income I’m happy to pay a dollar, or even two, to be able to use a clean restroom.

I think the general problem is interesting: how do we price necessities when our ability to pay is so different?

You collect tax to pay for the necessities and then don’t charge a per-use fee.

The ideal answer is, of course, that we shouldn’t put prices on most necessities, and the primary reason that we do is to threaten people into demeaning jobs.

Out of curiosity, where is it a full €2? I visited various places with pay toilets in 2022, and while it was more than I'd prefer, it was still only something like 1 or 1.25

Spending the money doesn't suck. Having to wrangle the payment system when you're in a hurry, that does suck.

The last time I went I just had to blip my credit/debit card. Very convenient. (Stockholm Central Station, Sweden).

Now try using a toilet in Germany without having coins on you.

My experience in Italy was that the paid toilets were worse maintained than basically every free toilet in Australia.

One of the toilets I paid for didn’t even have a seat.

That's just normal in Italy. The seats are often missing. People are used to it.

I’m imagining a student flat in Rome with a toilet seat mounted next to a stolen stop sign.

It sucks when your credit card isn't accepted and the machine won't read your coins correctly or missed one and you are thus just 10 cents short of being allowed to use the washroom and now the three people waiting behind you are just like "wtaf is taking so long".

Experienced this a while back in a shopping mall in France. Like, a mall has to be one of the most profitable places in a modern city, pretty sure they can afford to staff a couple washroom staff during business hours while everyone is pouring money into all the mall vendors.

> It's a negligible amount of money for the person using the toilet

Spoken with the voice of privilege.

Well, we're talking about Western Europe here. You either live there, or you're a tourist. Even if you don't have an Euro, you can just ask a random person and chances are they'll give one to you.

Yikes, begging to use a restroom? You'd think using the bathroom would be within the realm of a human right.

By the time someone gives me money I am covered in poo. :P

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