Here’s a trend one hopes catches on in the rest of the country, that of the sanitary roadside washroom. The folks in the Maritimes and New England are making your travel break a less worrisome adventure with some homey touches to the salle de bain dans la rue.
I’ve been in some pretty toxic dumps in my travels over the years, most recently in Alberta where things were so bad in one particular gas station washroom, that I did my best to hold off til I found another location. Trust me this was no easy feat, but none the less a decidedly necessary approach, such was the state of distress that this can had. This place had the aesthetic feel and toxicity of Three Mile Island at zero hour.
It’s nice to know that somewhere out there, somebody is thinking of us lonely travelers and our need to answer natures call from time to time.
So with a long weekend upon us once again, may you find safe trails and clean rest rooms, just like they have from the Miramachi to Cape Breton Island.
Gas stations deal their customers a royal flush
SHAWNA RICHER
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
SACKVILLE, N.B. — As Canadians hit the highways and byways this holiday weekend and over the dwindling days of summer, one unavoidable and unpleasant routine will inconvenience and unite all.
A stop at the gas-station restroom.
But for those travelling through the Maritimes and New England, going on the road is now a little more like going at home.
It has been two years since Irving Oil Ltd. of Saint John launched the Really, Really Clean Washrooms campaign that promised its restrooms would be scrubbed at an obsessive-compulsive pace “every 30 minutes.”
But something else is going on in those washrooms, something with a folksy East Coast feel. Irving gas-station operators are quietly getting their Martha Stewart on.
Most of the company's 800 gas-stop restrooms are individually decorated with fresh flowers, tasteful knick-knacks and country kitsch. There are houseplants and magazine racks, duck decoys and hand-painted stools, small tables and antique pieces. In the women's restrooms, the walls sport garden motifs of sunflowers and roses; the men's restrooms feature fish and ducks. Some feature original paintings by local artists.
None of these decorative touches would be out of place in a nice restaurant or hotel. But they surprise in a gas bar. Customer comment cards from restrooms in Miramichi, N.B., Oxford, N.S., and Bar Harbor, Me., to name just a few, tell the tale:
“You have such nice bathrooms! Pleasant, fragrant, clean and decorated!”
“The cleanest public washroom I have ever used. And the prettiest! 5 out of 5!”
“I've never seen a gas station restroom with antiques! Wow!”
“Who doesn't want a nice restroom?” asks Marlene Crossman, store manager of the Irving Mainway gas station in Sackville. “The added touches make it homey and comforting, an added bonus when you're travelling. Rather than feeling just ‘hospital clean,' they feel personal and relaxing. It's been fabulous for business. It's what we're known for now.”
Everyone who has ever made a car trip has reluctantly procured the grimy key on a wooden stick from a gas jockey, hovered carefully over the toilet seat and sighed with relief if there was paper on the roll. Everyone has seen a service-station washroom so filthy it made the ditch look inviting.
“Gas station bathrooms are the lowest of the low. Most of the ones I've seen are disgusting,” said Jon Thompson of Minneapolis, curator of a slick website devoted to the subject (www.restroomratings.com).
“But I give higher ratings to restrooms that take aesthetics into account. The ones that make you feel as if you were in your own home are more than just a system for going to the toilet. I've never been in an Irving bathroom, but they sound nice.”
Mike Crosby, head of marketing in the United States and Canada for Irving Oil, said the company has encouraged its store operators to do whatever it takes to make customers feel at home in the washroom.
“People need a nice place to stop,” he explained. “We want our people to put out fresh flowers and plants and pictures on the walls. We want you to feel like you're using the bathroom at home, not in a gas station that's gross and dirty.”
Years ago, when Mr. Crosby was starting out with the company, Arthur Irving, son of billionaire industrialist K. C. Irving, advised him to never underestimate the importance of the gas-station restroom. “Everyone has to go to the washroom,” Mr. Irving said wisely.
“It was great advice and I've never forgotten it,” Mr. Crosby said. “If I'm using the bathroom on the road, I'll pick up paper towels off the floor and wipe down the sink myself. I like seeing how the different stores decorate.”
It might make sense that Irving, which also produces toilet paper in its pulp-and-paper division, has a feel for bathrooms.
“If I bought a station tomorrow, the first thing I'd do is put up a huge sign saying: ‘Cleanest Bathrooms of Any Gas Station Anywhere,' ” wrote retail anthropologist Paco Underhill in Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping. “Gas is gas, and prices are fairly uniform, too.
But clean bathrooms would draw female drivers, who make more use of facilities and so have more bitter complaints about horrible, filthy conditions.”
Kim Miers agrees. In the women's restroom at the Irving station she manages in Oxford, she has painted the walls a pretty blue and put up candle holders and flowered borders. In the men's, a duck decor prevails. Never satisfied, she plans to redecorate in the fall.
“I look forward to visiting other Irving bathrooms,” she added. “They're so homey and warm. I think this is really unique to Atlantic Canada.”
Some of the nicer pieces do go missing at times, said Ms. Crossman in Sackville. But it hasn't deterred her from making the effort.
“It's a university town, so the signs are particularly hot items,” she noted “But it doesn't stop us from putting out nicer decor. Customers always know we're thinking of them.”
Tell us about your favourite and least favourite roadside pitstops encountered while travelling.
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