One of life's little questions

[GrUmPyBoDgEr]

I cannot be alone in my observations can I?

There are many parts of the World that I?ve not been to but here we have representatives from all over & I would appreciate your comments about your own observations & conclusions.

Yes you will already have guessed in which direction my question is coming from, it is indeed Gents toilets!

I?m pretty certain that Graffiti is a recognised art (?) form all over the World, the lowest form starting at downright crude and rising into the realms of highly amusing.
Some of the most amusing samples that I?ve had the honour of reading are engraved for eternity into the wooden partitions of some American crappers.

But no that is not my quest.
It is something which appears to occur only in England and is something that has had me questioning this strange phenomenon for many years.
Yes, the missing clothes hook!
Why do they disappear?
It doesn?t seem to matter where the crapper is, the clothes hooks fitted to the back of the doors just disappear.

Can it be described as a ?fetish??

Maybe there?s a secret Club of bog house clothes hook admirers.
I can picture in my minds eye, garden sheds with displays of rows of highly prized stolen clothes hooks hidden from public scrutiny carefully labelled with such as:-

?Birmingham Airport departures 2005?
?The spotted Dog 1987?
?St. Pancras 1976?
?Lotus Engineering Office 1983?

Or going off on a further tangent:-

?Hung Susie by her bra straps on this in Murphy?s Disco!?

I wonder if these "Collectors" have secret meetings or maybe have their own website with perhaps columns for swaps, for sale or searching for.

Do these crapper hook removers ?go equipped??

I?ve noticed in more security conscience crappers that special screws, requiring specialised screwdrivers with two thin pins, are used in order to foil these collectors; all to no avail.

They all seem to stop at nothing to relieve our crappers of this important piece of kit.

I bow to your collective knowledge & experience & beg you to throw some light on this conundrum?

It's something I must know befroe I turn my toes up.
John

[tdafforn]

John,
Could also be the result of people with heavy bags hanging them on the back of the door leading to metal fatigue and resultant mechanical failure..
Remember most public toilet doors are made of pretty weak materials to allow the police to bash them down when they are out on a junky catching spree. Meaning that getting a good fixing for the hook is hard work
tim

[mikealdren]

Tim,
Are you suggesting that they are Chapmanesque in design and need the sort of TLC that we provide our Elans rather than the Fiesta/Mondeo treatment that they get?

Mike

[GrUmPyBoDgEr]

Tim,

sound logic there & fully understandable if the rate of missing crapper hooks was the same around the world.
Airport ones, as you say do get heavily loaded with bags etc.
Munich still has all of its hooks after 20 yrs.
Birmingham no longer has any.
Force of gravity in Munich is also a bit higher than in Birmingham.
The factory I work at in the Midlands is barely 8yrs old & I estimate that there are now 20% of the hooks missing (posh stainless kit with those 2 pin screws)
No I don't think we can apply logic to answer this riddle.
We must do something to protect the British crapper hooks.

John

[GrUmPyBoDgEr]

I forgot to mention that in USA some hotels actually remove the doors (complete with hooks?) to stem the "Junky" things.
Fancy doing your business in full view of the reception desk

John

[tdafforn]

I think the answer is, yes treat english hooks like you treat a Lotus. Treat german hooks like you treat a BMW...
However from that analogy, French hooks will be wierd and involve pneumatics, Italian hooks will look beautiful but delicate, Hooks in the former east germany would be made out of cardboard, and hooks in the US will be huge and unwieldy..
Tim

[1964 S1]

YOU've got me looking here in the midwest USA,,, so far,,, no missing hooks, no missing doors ! ! ! I've looked at dozens so far, restaurants, gas stations and large car auctions...
Normally I'm a urinal guy but I'll keep checking and report back?

[GrUmPyBoDgEr]

The two places that I remember distinctly are:-
The Hilton in Flagstaff, Arizona; where they had purposely removed the doors from the toilets in the reception area, which was next to the area where they held dances etc.
The Sourdough Saloon in Beatty, Nevada where the Gents & Ladies was all in one, no locking method to the entry door & the crapper had no door & was next to the urinals. (Errrm not a posh place, but where most of the Automotive Summer testing people chose to spend their evenings)
Still wondering what happens to all the English crapper hooks though
John