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Bathroom Sign – Occupied or Vacant?

Why can’t people understand that when there is a large sign hanging on the outside of the bathroom door that says Vacant on one side and Occupied on the other that you should USE the sign. When you go inside, it is very simple to flip the sign and then when you leave you flip it back.

We have a staff bathroom behind the unit near our offices and it seems the sign is always on the wrong side. I have learned (as has most everyone else) to just knock when it says “occupied” if I need to go because most of the time it is empty. I’m thinking perhaps our janitor does this on purpose so people won’t use the bathroom. As a result, frequently when I’m in the bathroom people knock and I have to say “someone is in here”. Not the worst thing, but annoying.

The really annoying thing is what happened today. I’m in the bathroom and someone just puts their key in to unlock the door and come in. I yelped and the person apologized and said they didn’t notice the sign that says occupied. This is someone who has worked on this unit for years, and the sign is a large printed laminated 8.5 x 11 paper.

I sometimes wonder if I should just take down the sign. Is there any value to a sign used 1/2 the time? What we need are those automatic occupied/vacant signs like on airplane bathrooms. Although someone on my unit would be dumb enough to lock the door from the outside and leave.

After searching for a while, I finally came across a nice selection of locks on Amazon:

Click here for occupied – vacant locks at Amazon

4 thoughts on “Bathroom Sign – Occupied or Vacant?”

  1. Love this. This reminds me of Jacque Fresco’s idea that solutions to problems involving human nature aren’t attained with written laws even remotely as successfully as by technological engineering. Also thank you for link. Getting those indicator bolts for our new office.

    1. This is very clever. I may give this a try. Our office has some people who don’t even flip the sign from vacant to occupied, so I’m not sure they will swing the vacant sign into the bathroom with them either. However, your solution completely eliminates the problem we have where people leave the sign set to occupied even after they leave. That alone may make this solution worthwhile. Thank you for sharing!

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