By Audrey Reed
Opinions Editor
We all remember those long road trips with the family when dad won’t stop the minivan for anyone to go to the restroom because they “didn’t go when they had the chance.”
I thought those days were over. Then I went to Starbucks.
According to L.A. County Health Department, business establishments that do not serve alcohol do not have to provide restrooms to the public.
While requiring alcohol serving restaurants to have restrooms is logical, other businesses have an equal need for such facilities, like coffee shops.
The Starbucks in the Country Mart shopping center closed its restrooms to the public about nine months ago, Starbucks employees said. However, the Starbucks at Trancas Canyon has one unisex restroom.
From my own not-so-scientific experiments, roughly 45 minutes to an hour after drinking an ice blended mocha, a trip to the bathroom is in order.
If people are reading, studying or just talking to friends, they have to leave the business in search of a john.
Starbucks coffee drinkers have the option of either rushing home to use the facilities, or trekking across the busy Cross Creek Road to – gasp – the public restrooms.
While no one likes to use them, everyone has found themselves in one careful to touch as few items as possible.
There are two different sets of public restrooms in the Country Mart area – one behind Howdy’s and one in the catacombs of the second floor by the UCLA Medical Group office in the shopping center adjacent to it – three stalls per gender in all.
These moderately clean restrooms are open to anyone, however, they close fairly early, which causes a slight problem when people are in need later in the night.
While the public restrooms do need to be closed eventually, perhaps leaving them open later would be more effective if L.A. County Health Department will not require all businesses to have restrooms open to customers.
One would think that Starbucks would want people to stay and drink more overpriced coffee.
They could easily do this with re-opening the bathrooms to encourage people to congregate there.
But Starbucks is not the only business in Malibu that does not offer restrooms. Malibu Yogurt and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf are also culprits.
In fact, the only coffee shop located in Pepperdine’s immediate vicinity that does let customers use its restrooms is Diedrich’s Coffee Shop.
However, it does not always provide adequate facilities. Often the restrooms are shut down early, before closing, and workers will not let anyone, customer or pedestrian, use them.
Because of this I have been forced to end early in marathon study sessions, fueled by caffeinated filled lattes, teas and coffees.
Maybe they do this to save money or time when cleaning after closing time, but not having a restroom in a business that sells diuretics, whether it is coffee or alcohol, should provide such a common-place convenience.
The L.A. County Health Department should rethink the criteria for what types of businesses should have bathrooms.
It’s not as if restrooms are some rare luxury. After all, Thomas Crapper invented the mechanisms that make the modern toilet possible more than 150 years ago.
No one is requesting bidets, moisturizing hand soap or extra-quilted toilet tissue, just an ordinary practicality.
Because let’s face it, when you gotta go, you gotta go.
March 20, 2003
