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Not to crap on your idea, but convenience apps like this seem to mainly allow people not to simply ask. In my six decades I have learned both where I might find a toilet (Target, Safeway, gas station) and how to ask people when I need help.

Encouraging and enabling people to disengage and stare at a phone screen rather than talk to people seems corrosive to me.

I met a “founder” in Chiang Mai, Thailand who was developing this same app. He had the same rationale with the additional problem of language barrier. Travelers visiting Thailand should probably learn how to ask for the nearest hong nam on the flight over. The actual problem he intended to solve was social anxiety, not difficulty in finding toilets. When I told him that hotels usually have toilets in the lobby he said “Yeah but you have to ask to use them.” I can’t recall ever getting denied but I’m not anxious about talking to strangers either.




Hmm, I did not think about it this way. Personally, I have no problem asking to use the bathroom.

The problem happens in places like NYC, where a sit-down restaurant with less than 9 seats is not legally required to have a bathroom. Or in SF where the TJ's next to my apartment has had an "out of order" bathroom forever. Or if you have IBS (5-10% of Americans) and need to use the bathroom right away, all of a sudden.

This is not typically as much of a problem outside of major cities though, more of a nice to have in that case.




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