Portable restrooms and the hardworking contractors who place them at construction sites and special events have a positive impact for millions of people every day. Sometimes you have to take a step back from the vacuum truck or get your head out of the stacks of monthly billing to gain a fresh perspective on our industry.
As you’ll see in this column, portable restroom operators make major celebrations possible, help solve a major problem associated with urban homelessness and are capable of brightening the day of a small boy.
Of course, that doesn’t mean your work is done. In fact, every day brings new challenges in providing the public with safe and clean portable sanitation. Read on to learn about three very positive developments in portable sanitation and one serious security challenge you could be faced with in the future.
Someone appreciates us!
It’s not every day that a member of the public sings the praises of portable sanitation. So when columnist Charity Robey of the Shelter Island Reporter in New York called portable restrooms “indispensable,” it’s good to reflect on her words.
“Although I know it isn’t ladylike to say, I am a fan of the portable toilet,” she wrote recently. “For decades I lived in a house with one bathroom, inviting overnight guests to share our home and hearth. Many were the weekends when I could have used a porta-potty in the backyard.”
Robey noted that portable sanitation products make many large gatherings possible by providing a clean and convenient restroom solution for crowds. Without portable restrooms, how would events like large music festivals or running races happen?
She talks about participating with 10,000 bike riders in the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI) and how she appreciated restrooms placed along the long route.
She said the event “is a rolling state fair, complete with mud, pork chops, mosquitoes, scorching heat and downpours enlivened by the occasional funnel cloud. I can testify from personal experience that without the porta-potty, or kybo as they’re called in Iowa, there would be no RAGBRAI.”
Portable restrooms often get a bad rap from users who complain when they enter a unit that isn’t serviced properly. It’s nice when someone recognizes the valuable work performed by this industry.
A very special birthday gift
There’s something about portable restrooms that captures the imagination of some small children. Maybe a restroom is the modern version of the rigid cardboard appliance box kids in the past used to convert into playhouses and forts.
A few months back, 8-year-old Caleb Karnitz in Minnesota’s Twin Cities area became obsessed with portable restrooms. Every time Caleb saw a portable restroom at a park, he would beg his parents to check it out. He researched portable restrooms online and watched videos of them being delivered and cleaned. One of the websites he visited was for Jimmy’s Johnnys, a PRO we featured in the magazine a few years ago.
It seems that Caleb’s avid interest in portable restrooms is a characteristic of his autism, the parents told the South Washington County Bulletin newspaper. On the boy’s birthday, his parents asked Jimmy’s Johnnys to deliver a restroom to their driveway to surprise Caleb.
Jimmy’s Johnnys employee Ben Pilquist delivered the clean unit and was tickled to see the boy’s excited reaction.
“Normally when I pull up, people run,” Pilquist said when he delivered the unit and met the boy’s family. “If he wants to use it, that’s OK – just don’t tip it over.”
“This is his absolute favorite thing – bigger than Star Wars,” Caleb’s father told the newspaper.
Rave reviews for San Francisco restroom project
A year ago I introduced you to a new program in San Francisco that provided portable restrooms for homeless people in several city neighborhoods, including the SoMa, Mission, Mid-Market and Tenderloin districts. The program has been an unqualified success, according to a member of the city board of supervisors.
“This is one of the few programs that gets unanimously positive feedback,” Jane Kim said recently. “The few criticisms are that the hours are too short. At the minimum, by July, I would like to see a new Pit Stop in every district.”
In the pilot program, portable restrooms are brought in five days a week for six hours per day. Some permanent toilets offer longer hours. The program costs $120,000 per year, but the cost is offset by a reduction in cleaning costs and water usage associated with complaints of feces found on streetscapes, according to a news account in the San Francisco Chronicle.
The restrooms have brought quality of life gains for both the homeless population and people who walk the city streets.
“Overall, this has been a great program for the city,” Kim said. “It’s a clean and safe place for people to use. No one should have to step over human feces in the street or have to use the bathroom in the street.”
For PROs, especially those serving the nation’s biggest population centers, I’d like to hear if you’re involved in any programs to provide portable sanitation to the homeless. This is a vital public health concern and an area where PROs can make a big difference in the well-being of the cities they serve.
What can PROs do to prevent peeping?
A Chicago-area man was recently charged with disorderly conduct at a craft fair after police said he was peeping at women through the vents of a portable restroom. Police said the man entered a restroom and peered through the vents at women using an adjacent restroom, according to a report in the Chicago Tribune.
As a restroom contractor, have you ever seen a situation like this when you have multiple units placed in a row? It seems stories like this are becoming more common. There have been reports in recent years of assaults happening in restrooms, criminals hiding in restrooms to elude police and even a man hiding inside the holding tank to peep at women entering a restroom. These are disgusting stories that may involve persons suffering mental illness.
What can PROs do to enhance security for users of restrooms at large special events? Would there be a way to screen the units so users in one restroom can’t look through vents into another unit? Perhaps there are ways to stagger the placement of units to discourage this kind of behavior. Maybe unit spacing and added security personnel are ideas to be considered for special events.
If you’ve dealt with a security situation like one of the examples I mention, share your ideas to prevent problems in the future. Send me a note at editor@promonthly.com.
