"Up or Down? A Male Economist’s Manifesto on the Toilet Seat Etiquette"

“Abstract: This paper develops an economic analysis of the toilet seat etiquette, that is, whether the toilet seat should be left up or down. I investigate whether there is any efficiency justification for the presumption that men should leave the toilet seat down after use…” The author, Jay Pil Choi, holds a PhD in Economics from Harvard and is a professor of Economics at Michigan State University.

https://www.msu.edu/~choijay/etiquette.pdf

Link for those interested.

Thanks, ohai, this is a running debate with several people in my life. At least now I have academic support on my side.

Someone give this man tenure.

Good to see that economics PhD’s are wisely spending taxpayer dollars to make the world a better place.

Cliff notes–the “efficiency-maximizing” solution is for each individual to leave the toilet seat as it is after they use it, and let the next person put it up or leave it down. And there are about 15 pages of research, math, statistics, and recursive formulas that prove it.

lol

I never understood why women get so upset about this topic

I asked a woman once and she told me women usually sit on the bowl without looking if the toilet seat is up or down. It’s a habit. It’s always down at her place and in every public restroom.

^Yeah. If you go to a single woman’s apartment and use the restroom, it’s only polite to put the toilet seat down.

But if you share a bedroom with your wife, and you both use the same pot, is there any reason why you should have to put it down? She knows you use it too. She should be smart enough to take the .00001 seconds that it takes to look at the seat and put it down if she wants it down.

I put everything down. Apparently after you flush, it releases vapors into the air which are attracted to porous surfaces, like toothbrushes.

just pee in her sink. never have to lift the seat then.

X2 with Palantir

but shouldn’t girls have a habit of at least checking if the seats clean? Seat up or down aside I won’t touch a toilet without checking that there’s no lingering hairs or dribbles.

Greenman, most articles like that are written at home in the evening after a drink, so there’s no real evidence that taxpayer dollars are being wasted just because the professors have a sense of humor. And if they are in teaching roles the exercise is useful for applying the principles taught in non-cookie-cutter examples.

BTW, how do your tax clients feel about all the time you spend posting on AF?

+1

But this paper is more useful than most academic literature. At best, it proposes a mathematical solution to a common dilemma faced by modern households. At worst, it serves as a form of amusement and curiosity.

Growing up I was taught to put it down, so I just do it out of habit.

Edit: Are we talking about the seat only? Or the lid as well? I put both down.

I always wondered why girls didn’t prefer up since it would ensure that the guy didn’t pee on the seat.

This is definitely a good point.

If you want the seat down, be prepared to deal with the consequences.

And God forbid that she want some of that furry carpet crap on the toilet seat. That stuff makes toilet seats fall down mid-stream. I told her that if she wanted it, that I would put the seat up only once per pee. If the seat fell down and I went all over the carpet–oh well.

LOL? I don’t support furry things on toilets, but you wouldn’t put it back up? You’re an animal