Privacy

I'm thinking about taking up a collection. I'd like to send the designers of public bathroom stalls to Europe to tour the public bathrooms in those countries. I'm not an expert, but I remember a lot of them. Decades ago we spent three years in Germany, traveling whenever and wherever we could. More recently, we were able to spend some time in Italy. What I remember from all of these visits was the absolute privacy of the bathroom stalls. Sometimes there would be a man collecting the small entrance fee right at the door, or actually inside handing out paper towels or cleaning the sinks. While this was a bit disconcerting at first, it turned out to not really matter. The stalls there were more like closets. The walls started at the floor, and the door had no more than an inch clearance at the bottom. There was plenty of open space at the top of the door, but it didn't start for a good seven feet, sometimes more, depending on the height of the ceiling. I never felt a hint of claustrophobia. What I felt was comfortable, knowing that I was not on display in any way. Back to the sad state of U.S. bathrooms. Why can't there be some overlap to eliminate the gaps on either side of the door? A gap that is anything from a mere crack to, "Would you pass me that dictionary, please?" I'm in one office on a regular basis where you lock the door by putting your finger in a hole and sliding the bar to the left, leaving a perfect circle that is a good 1-1/4 inches in diameter. I know we're used to this, and we don't stare, and we're all built, very roughly speaking, the same. But how nice it would be to take care of changing clothes or dealing with one of the emergencies that we seem to fall prey to, without an audience. It would also eliminate the difficulties I've been reading about over who uses which bathroom. And if you needed to hide and have a good cry, you'd be all set. Thoughts, anyone?