New app lets you rent a toilet
New Yorkers are now renting out their toilets via an Airbnb-inspired app called "Airpnp" that shows the closest available commode and the price to use it, and instantly contacts the owner. Currently a handful of private addresses in the city offer their johns to any Johnny-come-lately. The Post located one porcelain throne that bills itself as a "charming Carroll Gardens commode" in a "cozy loft-style bathroom" on Smith Street, Brooklyn, at the OrangeYouGlad graphic-design studio. "You're our first!" yelled art director Connie Leonard excitedly when The Post walked in and asked to use the advertised WC. The OrangeYouGlad crew doesn't charge latrine users - unlike a toilet shark in Little Italy who was charging $20 for people who "really need to go and this will have to do!" The bathroom doesn't even have a sink. A toilet in Woodside, Queens, is more affordable at just $1.
It's not mentioned whether this is catering to people who are in an area without an available bathroom... or who refuse to go to public bathrooms. Probably both.
If the former, this serves as a commentary on our weird capitalistic society that any business has the audacity to refuse bathroom use to non-patrons. To me, that's a business offering to play chicken with any person who is crazy enough to play a game of mutually assured destruction. If someone comes into your restaurant clutching themselves and tells you they really need to go to the bathroom and they're about 5 seconds from exploding chunks of diarrhea out of their asshole onto the floor, is it time for you to haggle with them over buying the cheapest fucking thing you offer? That $1.79 of soda? Is that the wager you put on the table? Because any person can counter wager with having you clean up shit off the floor.. of your eating establishment.
If the latter, this is sadly another commentary on our current hand sanitizing generation of germaphobes who are only doing themselves (and more importantly, their kids) a disservice. Public bathrooms are indeed disgusting. But they're disgusting for a reason. It's a perfect example of tragedy of the commons where cleaniness of a free publically available toilet is used up and not replaced by certain people. Instead of learning the lesson, we are instead giving in to our germaphobia and jacking up our high horse a bit higher. I won't abide pnp-ing into a public bathroom. My shit is too good for that shithole. I need to find a place worthy of my shitting standards. And I can do that because there are people offering their private homes as a valuable commodity, cleaniness. For others to shit on.
It's just a transaction. But what does that make the user? A snob who needs to use a fucking app to find a place good enough for them to leave their shit in. What do you say when your friend looks up from their phone and asks you to get off the main road and drive 3-4 turns into a residential neighborhood so they can go inside a random house to use their bathroom? Do you ask them, did you just use your phone to order yourself an one-time bathroom use at a stranger's house?
What does this make the renter? A fucking bathroom janitor. That's what. You didn't strike on some golden principal that people will treat a pristine golden bathroom with respect. If they're renting your bathroom, your house is a public bathroom and people will tread shit all over it and leave piss on the floor just the same. And you're the one wiping up that stranger's piss. Because you're a rent-seeker.
What does this make the business who initially turns away non-patrons who need to use a bathroom really desperately? A terrible business run by a terrible businessperson. Because I've always seen people follow the general social custom that you should patron the place you just shat in. But the small subset of bathroom needers who might get away with not giving you business afterwards ruins it for everyone else, right? How dare they? Using your bathroom FOR FREE. You pay workers a minimum wage PER HOUR to clean that fucking place. And you provide that water to flush their shit out of your toilet. That costs all of $0.005 per flush or so. After a hundred people took a shit or a piss, you would have lost two quarters. And at the rate we're destroying the planet and water is becoming scarce, holy fuck, you'll soon be losing a whole dollar per 100! How can you even afford to run your business like this?
Transactions in a capitalist market are supposed to facilitate a winning trasaction for both sides. There are no winners here. Just assholes.