Ickiest Toilets in the Metro
By Marion Marking

Marion Marking is editor in chief at ChinaBusiness-Philippines magazine, which publishes monthly in English and Chinese and is available at National Bookstore, Powerbooks, Fully Booked, leading newsstands nationwide, and online via http://ChinaBusinessPhilippines.com. She can be reached at m.marking@fairnewsmedia.com.

While discussing content for our Top Restaurants issue, we got to talking about the dirtiest toilets in Metro Manila. (The discussion behooved our columnist Gerel Roa to write about the importance of a resto toilet in our latest issue, October 2008.)

One of the grossest experiences I had recently was walking into the toilet cubicle at a posh condotel and being greeted by the smell of feces. (I hope you aren´t having coffee or a sandwich as you read this.)

The toilet appeared clean, but the trash bin must´ve held something foul. I didn´t care to inspect, of course, and ran out of there in search of a fresher smelling cubicle.

It´s truly sad when establishment owners invest in the swankiest silver, glassware, décor, staff uniforms, and advertising only to neglect such an important investment as the toilet. They have multiple staff running around, ready to assist you with anything, but not enough housekeeping to make sure their toilets are clean? I don´t get it.

Sloppy toilets mean sloppy customer relations.

And, as our columnist Gerel said, it kind of makes you wonder how dirty the rest of the resto is, most importantly the kitchen, which you never get to see.

Some of the ickiest toilets I´ve entered belong to fast-food chains—two in particular, as the industry leader appears to have gotten the art of the clean, nice-smelling toilet down pat. I´ve backed out from using many fast-food ¨restrooms,¨ preferring to hold my water till I found less puke-inducing facilities.

Two popular fast-food chains are famous for their sticky tables and dirty toilets. They´ve been doing business for decades now so you´d expect more. Since they can´t maintain their toilet—or think little of bothering to do so—they´ve resorted to simply doing without.

Most of their outlets are in malls anyway so I suppose they thought to cut the expense. Unfortunately, even some outlets that are not in malls only have a small sink.

By far the ickiest toilet I´ve visited in recent years belongs to a coffee shop in Makati, somewhere around Legaspi Village.

The service is good, the owner is very nice, but the toilet...HORRORS! The floors were wet, the mats, gross. I was afraid to touch anything. At least there was no foul odor. But there was a damp smell; or maybe I was imagining it.

The nearest option being the nice toilets of The Enterprise Center (which was quite a walk away for someone who simply has to go), I made do. Despite everything else being great, I don´t think I´m ever having coffee there again.