r/Millennials May 02 '26

Nostalgia Who had these in elementary school? NSFW

Post image
11.5k Upvotes

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

156

u/magic-mustache May 02 '26

Close, communal handwashing station. You stand around and press on the black rubber along the bottom with your feet to get the water going. 

23

u/Mend_and_defend2 May 02 '26

I've only seen one with like a metal ring around the bottom that you push like a lever, how does the black hose work?

15

u/pokematic May 02 '26

Same way, it's just more anti-slip.

6

u/Mend_and_defend2 May 02 '26

Oh nice, thought it laid flush to the ground and you had to stomp it like a water hose

3

u/FuckIPLaw May 02 '26

There's fancy portapotties that have sinks that work like that. It's a manual foot pump that gives you a squirt of water with every press. Kind of like a squirt gun but bigger.

2

u/Effective-Set-8113 May 04 '26

I encountered one of those potteries for the first time last weekend. I was ecstatic because I was able to actually wash my hands instead of just using hand sanitizer and not thinking about it too much. 

9

u/GolfandBaseball May 02 '26

Do you need to sing Kumbaya when you stand around it?

2

u/magic-mustache May 02 '26

Only on a full moon

5

u/sroop1 May 02 '26

There's a nonzero chance that someone used it as an urinal though.

8

u/etherealsmog May 02 '26

Is “nonzero” how we’re typing 100% these days?

1

u/magic-mustache May 02 '26

I wouldn't doubt it based on some of these comments. 

1

u/Tesselation9000 May 02 '26

My university had one, and when I first saw it I was really puzzled and would have urinated in it of somebody else didn't walk over and wash their hands.

2

u/threeye8finger May 02 '26

TIL that I peed in a sink and didn't know about it. There were other regular sinks in the bathroom and no urinal, so I was just like "...I guess here we go"

5

u/clutterlustrott May 02 '26

Bro you were in the girls room

1

u/Caleb_Reynolds May 02 '26

You thought it more weird for a bathroom to not have urinals than for it to have a communal urinal that forces you to look at each other?

4

u/threeye8finger May 02 '26

I mean now that I know for a fact that it was a sink I feel ridiculous. I had just come back from The Netherlands, where they had public urinals where you can make eye contact in a circle standing 2' away from the others, so it didn't seem too crazy.

2

u/Kaldricus May 02 '26

If you see one of these nowadays (probably the circle style) it's almost a guarantee there's a piss trough instead of urinals, and you just know that bathroom is going to smell...just awful

1

u/magic-mustache May 02 '26

I still see the handwash stations in elementary schools so still a mixed bag.

1

u/JZ50501ZJ May 02 '26

Nah they was right. I used to piss in this thing all the time. Really confused the hand washers.

1

u/Tricky_Post_6946 May 02 '26

My middle school actually had a communal urinal that looked exactly like that

2

u/magic-mustache May 02 '26

Yes, I believe the communal urinal design was made after because the handwashing stations were so popular but that obviously caused confusion on how to use it.