The Restroom Wars : Should Gas Stations Be Required to Provide Facilities for Travelers?

Return with us now to those great days in gas station history . . . when vandals were content with occasionally stopping up restroom toilets instead of stealing them outright, when attendants were not locked into kiosks behind bullet-proof glass . . . those thrilling days of yesteryear . . . when full serve was the only serve, when station attendants freely washed car windows, checked oil, water and tire pressure and handed out complimentary maps . . . yes, the days when service stations actually dared to provide service.

And gas station restrooms, typically clean and unlocked, had yet to join the endangered-species list.

“If somebody pulled in just to use the restroom, they (dealers) used to send attendants out to wash the windows of the cars in hopes that the people would come out and buy gas,” recalls Roy Bonham, a former Chevron representative who called on dealers. “That was standard practice in company-operated Chevron stations in the ‘60s.

“The oil company also gave station proprietors a quarter-cent-per-gallon (of gas pumped) reduction in rent for keeping the restrooms clean and properly supplied. That added up to a lot of money so the oil companies quit doing that.”

The New Wave

Bonham, who concluded his career as a company rep in 1970 to became a Chevron proprietor himself, recently joined the new wave. His old station on the Santa Ana Freeway in La Mirada was demolished and a streamlined, computer-controlled “pumper/foodmart” was installed, designed to minimize service and maximize sales of food and gas.

To Bonham’s horror, not to mention that of his customers and those in similar stations, the public restrooms were removed and not replaced.

“I asked the company to put restrooms in and they said no, because of the costs. . . . Then they said that they would put the rough piping in and come back later and install the restrooms. They haven’t done that. The station has been open for 14 months. I told them (Chevron representatives) we still need the restrooms and they said they weren’t going to put any in. We get customers who ask where the restrooms are . . . then they drive out and go across the street to the Texaco, which has restrooms.”

Bonham is hardly the only one upset about the status of gas station restrooms. Their disappearing act is a subject that affects millions of travelers.

Part of that act appears to be the steady decline of entire service stations. According to Vic Rasheed, executive director of the Service Station Dealers of America, there are now about half as many gas stations in the country (120,000 at the end of 1986) as there were in 1973 (about 226,500). In California, there are 12,800 stations now, compared with about 22,800 in 1981, says Steve Shelton, executive director of the Southern California Service Station Association. In addition, both say, many of the remaining stations have been converted to gas-only or food-and-gas-only operations that do not offer public restrooms.

Consumers, however, are starting to fight back. Taking note of the rest stop attrition, they have begun waging a war of their own, arguing to their local government officials that what was once a voluntary service--free public restrooms at virtually all gas stations--should now be mandatory. Some have already won their point.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors earlier this month passed an ordinance requiring that all new service stations built within 660 feet of a major highway in unincorporated areas of the county include public restrooms. Downey adopted an even stronger ordinance in 1985 requiring all service stations to provide public restrooms and giving old stations without restrooms 10 years to comply.

The oil companies say they are being picked on. “We disagree with the fact that our industry should be the only industry required to build public restrooms. . . . Have you ever tried to use a restroom in a bank?” asks Tom Murphy, Los Angeles regional marketing manager for Arco Petroleum Products.

Candelario Arriola, a machinist who once worked as an aide to former Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty and to several city council members, is the consumer who first alerted County Supervisor Mike Antonovich to the problem.

“I’m plagued constantly with uncontrolled urine problems. I’ve been turned down (for access to a restroom) by a lot of gas stations even after I’ve bought gas sometimes,” says Arriola, a Lake View Terrace resident.

Antonovich was impressed enough with Arriola’s plea to sponsor the legislation. He also says he was moved by reports from other constituents, among them a disabled veteran who has to self-catheterize himself frequently. “If a man or woman becomes disabled in the service of their country and then is denied using a facility, I just don’t think that’s fair,” Antonovich says. “I think the oil companies are shirking their responsibility in this area . . . . They used to do it (provide restrooms) voluntarily and I think they ought to be encouraged again.”

Foes of Proposal

While some oil companies say they generally build all new stations with public restrooms and ask their dealers to make them available to the public, several sent representatives to testify against the proposed Los Angeles County ordinance.

Says Ben Smith, Chevron USA’s manager of dealer and consumer affairs, “No oil company provides restrooms because we’re benevolent organizations. We do it because it draws customers in. It’s a commercial decision. . . . We don’t think we should be legislated into this. That just doesn’t seem very American.

“Ninety-five percent of our stations in California have restrooms. The vast majority of them will continue to have restrooms. But we feel we have the right to determine whether it’s appropriate or inappropriate to have restrooms at a particular location.”

As for the location where Roy Bonham couldn’t get Chevron to build restrooms, Smith says income from the station may not currently “justify installation of the restrooms” but might eventually.

“We’re continually going back and making improvements in our stations. If Mr. Bonham would want to put out $30,000 to $40,000 of his money (to install two new restrooms), that would be fine. It’s awfully easy to spend other people’s money.”

Restroom costs are just one of many unpleasant facts oil companies and station personnel must deal with, says Shelton, pointing out that restroom abuses sometimes make it difficult for dealers to retain employees and often deter customers.

“You talk to any service station dealers and you’ll hear about multiple instances where people have defecated in the sinks and the floors,” he says. “They’ve stolen the sinks and toilets. We’ve had guys sued successfully by non-customers who used their restroom but then slipped and fell on somebody else’s water or something else left on the restroom floor. People change clothes in restrooms. They shave. They warm baby bottles. They take baths in the sink.

“If you’re closed at night and people want to get into the bathroom, they’ll tear the door off the restroom or kick it in. People have tunneled through the walls of a restroom to get in and rob the station. They shoot up or sell dope in there.”

Shelton estimates that it costs a service station dealer about $4,000 a year just to clean restrooms and provide toilet tissue and towels; costs at high traffic locations, he adds, can be as much as $5,000 to $10,000 a year.

But restroom traffic at remaining full-service stations is also picking up because many of the newest stations have no restrooms. “The newest stuff that most of the majors (major oil companies) are building generally don’t have restrooms. Where do those customers go to the bathroom? The other dealers sometimes have three times as many customers using their restrooms as there were before,” Shelton notes.

But even dealers who seem to have the best of both worlds --computer-operated pumps, an attendant in a booth and full-service facilities--maintain that the restroom issue appears to be a no-win proposition.

Michael Nahabet, proprietor of Ed’s Exxon in Manhattan Beach, says he grew so tired of the costs and other problems of providing unlocked public restrooms that for six months he tried locking them and making them available only to his customers.

“People would come and yell at us and get angry that our restrooms were just for customers,” he recalls. “They’d start swearing at you and get into an argument, and some of them would fight. There were some physical fights with our attendants because of it. And some of the people would just go behind the station.

“Six months ago, we decided to lock the restrooms but to give the key to anybody who asks. We still have problems with people going in and messing it up.”

Nahabet’s solution? “Let the government pay us and we’ll provide this service to the public.”

Rasheed proposes another alternative, one which he says many of his group’s 60,000 dealer/members favor.

They want a uniform standard, he says, “either everybody (with a station) has to have restrooms or nobody has to have restrooms.

“Some stations, particularly the company-operated pumpers, have been built without restrooms so that the pumpers get the gasoline business and the (full-service) dealers get the restroom business--they end up becoming restroom attendants and running a public convenience. The name of the game used to be service, but service today is so expensive; the market is so competitive that service is almost a thing of the past.”

Shelton, who has visited “immaculate” gas station restrooms in Japan “that look like they’re in the Hyatt Regency,” sees a yet another answer to the dilemma:

“I still believe the first line of defense is a public that’s willing to let their dollars speak and say, ‘I will not trade with a place that doesn’t provide the amenities I require.’ If people did that, there would be restrooms everywhere.”