Why men can't wee straight..

And… what on earth has that got to do with business? Let me explain.

There’s a fabulous story which I was reminded of recently by Gill Fielding at an EBA event in London, Gill asked the question; “Why can’t men pee straight?” You may or may not have heard the story, it involves the mens toilets in Schiphol airport, Amsterdam… I promise this story is going somewhere and has relevance to a business blog.

Management at the airport had noticed that the cleaning bill associated with the mens toilets versus the ladies toilets at the airport were disproportionate to the number of users, with the cleaning bill for the mens facility being dramatically higher. With an eagle eye on cost savings they decided to look into the problem and commissioned a time and motion study… no, really. They guy with the clipboard, (ok I’m assuming it was a guy), stood back, observed and recorded his findings.

What he discovered was that men seemed to lack focus and direction which led to what he described as “human spillage” and therefore the resulting higher cleaning cost to tidy things up. They determined that they needed to get the men focused on the task in hand, (OK couldn’t resist that one).