The Right To Pee While Standing Up

[bart_calendar]

Recently a landlord in Germany had a problem. He had nice marble floors in the bathrooms of his apartments. He noticed that when male tenants moved out the floors around the toilets were almost always damaged to some degree. This happened less often with female tenants and he realized why - the dudes were missing the bowl while peeing

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

If I were the owner I'd appeal.

[bart_calendar]

I think for me it would depend on my odds of getting a female judge the next time around.

[danieldwilliam]

Well yes, American Legal Realism front and centre.

This seems to me to be a fairly straightforward case of contract enforcement. I wouldn't expect to lose a case where someone was stubbing out cigarettes on my marble floors.

[bart_calendar]

That's because you wouldn't be going against established ideas of masculine conduct.

[naath]

I don't think it's right to tell your tenants how to pee; but I think that having damaged the floor the tenant ought to be paying to have it made good. That is surely the POINT of tenancy deposits.

[bart_calendar]

Yeah, it really goes to show just how entrenched traditional ideas of masculinity are.

If he'd damaged the floor in any other way the courts would never have sided with him.

[cartesiandaemon]

Well, no. If he'd damaged the floors by stubbing cigarettes, the court would have said "obviously that's your fault". If he'd damaged the floors by walking about on them, the court would have said "renting someone a floor you can't walk on isn't fit for purpose, it your own stupid fault, you can't require tenants not to walk on the floor".

The question is, is pissing on the bathroom floor a normal use of a bathroom? I mean, I'd expect sooner or later someone to get a few drops on it, but not to have the floor swimming in...

[bart_calendar]

The thing is it was a marble bathroom floor and marble is a really soft stone. If he was a tenant there for a couple years I could see some damage to the marble even from just a couple drops each pee.

[little_bounce]

Unlike in Switzerland, where, in particular in Swiss Germany, it can be in your renting contract that, after a certain hour of the evening, i.e. 21:00 or 22:00, gentleman must sit down so as to minimise the amount of noise that they are making.

For some reason it reminds me of the LadyPee- the female urinal, clearly invented by a man who believes that at all time, women wear skirts and stockings. Not jeans. Or tights.

[bart_calendar]

How would a landlord prove you peeded standing up at 10 p.m.?

[little_bounce]

Your neighbours would hear you! And report on you. Snitching is a fine Swiss tradition.

[bart_calendar]

I think I'd be giggling too much if I was on the phone with a cop complaining about peeing.

[mastadge]

WTF? Pee in whatever position you want, but clean up your spills and drops and dribbles.

[onceupon]

This is what I was thinking.

It's not that he peed on the floor sometimes, it's that he didn't take proper care of the marble by cleaning it up, which constitutes tenant damages, from my perspective.

[deep_blue_see]

That would be my thought as well.

If he were peeing on the walls and screwing up the wallpaper, surely to god they'd let the landlord collect for *that*, right? Why should the floor be any different?

[soon_lee]

Yes this. Not everyone has perfect aim all the time.

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