http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/29/wo...rone.html?_r=0

Interesting story in today's NYTimes about changing Paris public toilets and how the Dames pipi are history.

Actually I feel sorry for them.. it does seem wrong to be pushed out of a job like that.. and not even offered a job with the new toilet company.. what a bullshit line that they do not think the ladies can be trained to handle the new job.. and what bs to say they must be able to "speak Arabic to the sultan" .. like tourists who spend 1000 euros a night on a hotel and are chauffeured around in limos use public toilets.. lol

more,
http://www.expatica.com/fr/news/coun...91e50-55772040

You have to be a beauty queen or king and speak Arabic and multi tongues to work in WCs - oh how the power of French unions have been diluted!

The <i>dames pipi</i> have been history for years. The vast majority of municipal public toilets closed years ago when the sanisettes were created, including the famous 'historical monument' toilets at Madeleine.

Madeleine was where the prostitutes hung out, right?

Now a Dutch company running public toilets in Paris and even London - leave it to the Dutch whose public toilets are few and far between it seems!

I can see the Eiffel Tower TP printed rolls could be a good souvenir or something to give to friends as a gift from your trip!

I used to use the TP from the old public toilets to keep notes on when I ran out of writing paper. It certainly was durable.

Talk about durable TP - when I was camping in the UK long ago they used some TP that could have been used as wax paper - seriously - one camp director told me that he would buy better stuff but folks 'would then nick it' - some of the waax issue even at governtment WCs had something about HM services on it!

I remember "borrowing" a few rolls of American TP from the Embassy in Madrid one summer, long before security was so tight, when the Marines wore their dress blues.

Can't help but wonder that les dames pipi was just an excuse to discuss someone's obsession with coprophilia.

coprophiliac ‎(plural coprophiliacs) someone with a marked interest in excrement, especially the use of feces or filth for sexual excitement.

for those like moi who didn't quite get the meaning of that fancy word - great post though! Maybe the dames pipi had coprophilia?

It's much more likely that those women were in desperate need of employment and that sexual excitement in any form had nothing to do with their choice of scrubbing filthy toilets and cleaning up vomit for a living. They are virtually unemployable now since that's all they have been doing for dozens of years and have no other marketable skills.

It was always a bit unnerving for American men to waltz into say a men's toilet to use the urinal and see uniformed toilet ladies doing their job right by the urinal and not batting an eyelash - I was in Europe for a long time once and got used to this and forgot so when I came home I entered a restroom with a woman cleaning it and started to head to the urinal and the woman yelled - can't you see I'm cleaning here - quite a difference and always thought the European approach more sensible.

Now les hommes de pipi for women's room I don't think those existed?

Oh, you should try a trip to Saudi Arabia. The women's toilets are always totally filthy because the pipi men can never get in there to clean them.