Bartender stocks women’s bathroom at work. Then she reveals a disgusting secret about the men’s room

A bartender is questioning men's hygiene habits after noticing quite the difference in soap usage between the men's and women's bathrooms at work.

Veronica Skaia (@veronica.skaia) films herself refilling the soap dispenser in the women's bathroom at the bar where she works. It's a routine task, but she says there's one dispenser she doesn't really have to worry about as much.

“Hi, guys. I'm at work and guess what I'm doing?” asks Skaia, showing herself pouring soap into the dispenser attached to the wall. “Filling up the [women's] soap dispenser because it ran out of soap.”

“Guess what I'm not doing?” she asks. “Filling [up] the men's soap dispenser because it is still full of soap from last weekend when I replaced half of it.” Her video has gotten more than 817,000 views.

In other words, while women went through enough soap to require a refill, the men's dispenser stayed full pretty much all week.

Are men washing their hands?

Skaia's observation isn't totally shocking. A 2013 study by Michigan State University published in the Journal of Environmental Health observed 3,749 people using public restrooms in a college town and found that women were “using soap and engaging in proper hand washing behavior significantly more (77.9%) than men (50.3%).”

Meanwhile, 14.6% of men skipped hand-washing entirely, and 35.1% rinsed with water, no soap (compared to 7.1% and 15.1% of women, respectively). Roughly 10.3% of all participants didn't wash their hands at all.

The findings suggest that Skaia's experience may reflect a broader pattern, though they don't establish what's happening in her particular workplace. Apparently, instructional hand-washing signs bumped soap usage (from 60.5% to 68.5%).

Another study published in 2009 was more appalling: Researchers used wireless devices at a busy highway rest stop in the U.K. to record how many people used the soap dispensers, concluding that of the 200,000 bathroom trips, only 31% of men and 65% of women washed their hands using soap. One of the study's authors, Susan Michie, told CNN that people were less likely to wash their hands if nobody was around to see.

“The more people were in the toilet area the more they were likely to wash their hands,” Michie said. “If there were no people around, people tended to zap out with no one noticing.”

And a 2016 meta-analysis from dozens of studies found that, on average, women were 50% more likely than men to engage in proper hand-washing and other hygiene practices during an outbreak.

Michie chalked up the gender difference to the ways in which men and women are socialized. “Women are more focused on care than men – childcare, household care, personal care,” she said.

Washing with soap matters

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), washing hands with soap and water helps prevent the spread of respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses.

The agency recommends lathering “the backs of your hands, between your fingers, and under your nails,” and scrubbing for at least 20 seconds (or humming “Happy Birthday” from beginning to end twice).

Rinsing with water alone might remove some germs, but soap is significantly more effective at scrubbing them off.

It's worth noting that soap consumption doesn't necessarily equate directly with bathroom hygiene.

Is there an issue with the soap dispenser?

The bar Skaia works at might serve far more women than men, and the dispensers in each bathroom might release different amounts of soap. But if her comment section is any indication, this disparity is pretty unsurprising.

“Almost all men think they don't need to wash their hands after peeing. Which is insane to me,” one commenter wrote.

“My husband 80% of the time will tell me he saw a guy not washing his hands after leaving the restroom,” wrote a second. “Half the time it's right after he heard them blow it up … It's disgusting.”

A third, who identified herself as a flight attendant, said: “Even the men in suits sitting in first class don't wash their hands.”

And one viewer, who wrote that they once had a soap-dispenser-filling job as well, also echoed Skaia's experience, adding: “At my last office I was the bathroom hand soap replacer person. I refilled the soap in the [women's] bathroom every week. The men's? ONCE in TWO YEARS.”

Maybe the next time a dude wants to shake your hand at the bar … don't.

@veronica.skaia

Subplot News reached out to Veronica Skaia via TikTok direct message.

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