There are few places in a school more socially complex than the boy’s bathroom. 

On the surface level, it should be simple: All you need to do is walk in, do what you need to do, and leave. But in reality, it feels like Jeff Probst’s Survivor, where the real challenge is winning over your opponents to find a socially acceptable place to stand; a silent social experiment, complete with rules nobody states aloud but somehow follows anyway… for the most part. 

For many people, urinals aren’t just about convenience; they respect how quickly social expectations are learned and picked up in shared spaces. 

One perspective from high school junior Romi Balkan, a female, suggests that urinal etiquette may even reflect social expectations, where behavior in these spaces becomes quietly influenced by how people think they’re viewed by society. 

“I think that urinal etiquette is interesting,” she said. “I think it’s interesting how for a lot of girls, the bathroom is a place to hang out, get ready, and talk, but for guys it is something else entirely.”

High school sophomore Devlin Fields is a male and explains how integral the boy’s bathroom is to his daily routine.

“I stay hydrated and drink a lot of water,” he said. “I use the school bathrooms pretty often… Probably twice or maybe thrice a day [and] I use the school urinals pretty often.” 

Rule one: the spacing agreement. 

The first rule is spacing. If there are multiple urinals open, people don’t just pick one at random; they perform an instant, unspoken calculation that rolls off like the addition of single digits. In a survey of 30 BHS male students selected at random by grade-level, 53% of 17 respondents admitted that they would default to using the urinal on the far left if it were to be unoccupied. 29% admitted to using the urinal on the far right if it were to be unoccupied.  

Fields discussed what he tries to keep in mind while using the school urinals. 

“It is a very nuanced social situation that is very often overlooked,” he said. “I bet you could get a lot of Harvard professors in game theory to analyze the ideal strategy [for where you place yourself].” 

Fields continued.  

“I am 6’3 on a good day and about 6’1 on a bad day,” he joked. “I can tell sometimes that when it’s a two urinal situation and I enter, I feel a little bit of the other guy’s awareness of where I am [with respect to him].” 

Things get much more complicated when the bathroom is crowded. People often hang around the back and wait for an opening rather than violate the unspoken distance requirement. It’s not about inconvenience for a lot of people, but it’s about avoiding the social discomfort of being too close to other people conducting the same business. 

 When there is an empty urinal between two options, that space is to be considered as sacred, and it is not considered acceptable to use if there are others available. That being said, there are a few law-defying individuals who act like the spacing rule was just a suggestion. 

In an instance where  three urinals are lined up side by side and both the far left and far right urinals were occupied, 35% of respondents indicated that they would just go to the middle urinal, 35% indicated that they would head to an empty stall and 29% indicated that they would hang around the back and wait patiently. 

“If that happens (the situation described above), I think they should just go [instead of waiting],” Balkan said. “Why are people scared? It’s not a shameful thing.” 

What’s strange about this is that there’s no constitutional decree or the fact that nobody explains it. There’s no morning announcement, no student handbook, or no “freshman bathroom orientation.” The moment you step up to a row of urinals, your brain just knows; you might as well call it a sixth sense or reflex. 

Rule two: silence. 

The boy’s bathroom is one of the only places in school where conversation disappears instantly… or so you would think. Even people who are normally loud seem to develop a sudden interest in the floor, wall, or flickering ceiling lights. Talking isn’t forbidden, but it does feel out of place. 

Fields explains his view on conversation.

“You should always match how  the other person is acting, reflecting their social behaviors,” he said. “If they don’t talk, you don’t talk. Silence is only awkward if one of you doesn’t want it to be silent, [so] if both parties are content in the silence [then] it is not awkward.” 

Fields continues to add.

“[Conversation] is not a breach of social etiquette. It all depends on how [confident] you are and how long you think you can hold the conversation for,” he said. “If you don’t think you have much to say [though], don’t say anything.”

70% of respondents agreed that sparking up conversation is a breach of social etiquette when you and someone else are in proximity, while 30% agreed to it being nothing out of the ordinary. 

Eye contact follows the same logic. It isn’t avoided; everyone just agrees that facing forward happens to be the safest option. 

There is also a lighter form of “judgement” that shows up in unexpected ways. 

Fields joked that “Some people need to drink more water because they’re only using the urinal for like 15 seconds. Those are rookie numbers.” 

No one teaches urinal etiquette, and still, everyone seems to figure it out almost instantly. This can also be said for many social expectations that shape behavior without being directly spoken. In a place, like a line of urinals that should be simple and straightforward, people still manage to build some sort of structure.