So a homeless woman walks into a restroom that’s for customers only…

“Can I use your restroom?”

Ninety minutes earlier I had passed her on my way inside. She’d been leaning against the wall just beyond the last of the coffeehouse’s sidewalk tables, scrolling on her cellphone. She was well-kempt for being in a state of homelessness, clothes relatively clean, cart of personal possessions neatly organized.  

“I’m sorry,” said the employee behind the counter, “the restroom is for customers only.”

The woman hesitated, evincing the fidgets of urgently needing to urinate (at least). “Well,” she finally declared, striding forward purposefully, “I’m not going to just go in the street!” She disappeared behind the restroom door and threw the deadbolt. The employee looked on for a moment, then moved on to other tasks. 

*

I’ve never been homeless, but it’s no great feat of imagination and empathy to know that the experience is awful. Finding places to use the toilet, never having your own space to accommodate this most basic and unavoidable of human functions, is merely one constant and particularly demeaning aspect of homelessness. 

What I have personally experienced is being out and about and needing to use the loo. And on many, many such occasions I have walked into a business I wasn’t patronizing and availed myself of the facilities. Sometimes I’ve asked for permission, sometimes not — including times when I knew I would be stopped if I gave the employees/owners a chance to turn me away.

It’s easy to rationalize my behavior. I didn’t steal or damage anything, after all; I didn’t piss on the toilet seat or shit in the urinal. Where was the harm?

But you know the sign: WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYONE. That’s not idle talk: so long as they’re not being discriminatory about it (i.e., on the basis of ethnicity, gender, etc.), a business may legally refuse service to anyone for any reason. It’s their business, their property, not mine.

It’s easy to understand why a business might have a “customers only” policy. Every aspect of a business is an expense. Water costs money. Toilet paper, soap, cleaning supplies cost money. Labor costs money. Customers, in effect, pay for these things with their patronage; non-customers who use the facilities are simply taking money out of the business’s pocket. 

No doubt that by and large this cost is a pittance per person; but the cost or savings of such a policy is found not per person but in the aggregate. And many businesses operate on the slimmest of margins. Saying a business should be willing to eat the cost of allowing non-customers to use the facilities is easy when you’re not the one footing the bill. How much profit should a business be compelled to give away: 0.05%? 1%? 14%? Where/how do you draw the line? And why should you get to draw it and not the owner?

Then there’s the uncomfortable fact that, on the whole, customers are more of a known quantity than non-customers. A certain percentage of customers are regular patrons, which means that, unlike non-customers, they have some investment in keeping the facilities nice and the business afloat. That alone makes customers on the whole a safer bet, even if some customers do treat businesses like shit.

And among non-customers, homeless persons are the biggest risk, as there is a higher percentage of “mental illness” in this cohort than among the general population — if for no other reason than the fact that (to quote one researcher) “Homelessness represents an existential crisis that threatens mind and body alike.” Plus, lacking other options most of us take for granted, homeless persons in general will be more likely to make more extensive use of restroom facilities (e.g., taking a “sink bath”) than for which they are intended by the business owner.

Of course, one sense in which homeless persons, customers (whether one-time or repeat), and non-customers are alike is that there is no way to prejudge the behavior of a given individual based on which of these groupings they fit into. Leeway for individual judgments is built into “WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYONE.” Many businesses and employees make judgment calls on the fly regarding the non-customer wanting to use the loo — judgments that are sometimes based solely on affect or behavior rather than whether or not the person has access to a house or apartment.

*

Five minutes later the woman exited, calling out an unironic “Thank you” in her wake. When I used the loo later, there was no sign of her having been there.

Common as such an incident is, I found myself struck by the fact that the woman had asked permission despite being both homeless and desperately needing to relieve herself. She could see that the restroom door was wide open, yet she didn’t simply barge ahead. It was a sign of character, I think. 

But I would not frequent this particular coffeehouse unless I believed the owners and employees were also people of character. On many occasions I have witnessed their considerateness and generosity to customers and non-customers alike — not to mention that they offer a novel solution to the conundrum of being compassionate while preserving a customers-only policy: selling sticks of honey for 50 cents a pop. 

To me, this was a case where nobody was wrong and yet people were at cross-purposes. The business has a reasonable policy. The employee attempted to enforce that policy, as her boss has instructed. The woman asked permission, then used a toilet rather than relieve herself on the street, and she did not abuse the facilities.

For many of us it’s hard not to pass judgment, to reduce every instance or issue to a binary — right/wrong, should/shouldn’t — where of course our instinctive feeling must be correct. But perhaps sometimes we’re better off simply reflecting on the facts and trying to process the matter from every angle we can imagine. Homeless persons, business owners, employees, customers, non-customers — everyone’s got a point of view in every situation, every moment. 

Empathy is the ability to imagine yourself in another’s shoes, to see through another’s eyes, to feel what they feel. It’s a skill worth practicing whenever opportunities present themselves — which is constantly, even in the most seemingly mundane of circumstances.