I recently stumbled across a statistic on LinkedIn, which, as we all know, is where facts go to speak in motivational quotes, claiming that 1 out of 2 people faces a barrier to hygiene in public restrooms.

Now, I did not fact-check this. Just letting you know. But as a seasoned commuter and an unwilling connoisseur of public restrooms from Midtown to wherever-the-train-delays-me-next, I can say with deep spiritual certainty that this tracks.

Because let me tell you what the statistic fails to capture. The true barrier to hygiene is not infrastructure.

It’s people.

Just the other day at Grand Central Terminal, a place that feels both majestic and mildly apocalyptic, I had one of those moments. You know the kind. The urgent, non-negotiable, “this is not a drill” situations. I darted toward the side stalls (pro tip: more stalls, higher odds, slightly less despair).

A woman exits one just as I arrive. Our eyes meet. There is a moment. A silent exchange. A passing of the baton.

I enter.

No toilet paper.

None. Not a square. Not a ghost of a ply.

And here’s the thing that shook me to my core. She knew.

She had definitely known.

And she said nothing.

Nothing!

This is not a plumbing issue. This is a collapse of civilization.

Because there exists, or perhaps once existed, an unspoken social contract among restroom-goers. A sisterhood. A fellowship of the stall. If there is no toilet paper, you warn the next person. You make eye contact. You whisper urgently like you are passing state secrets that there is no paper in there.

This is not optional. This is humanity.

And yet, here we are. Walking past one another in silence, leaving each other to discover horrors alone. It’s Lord of the Flies, but with handbags.

Now, thankfully, I am a woman of preparedness. Somewhere between snacks for emotional emergencies and receipts I cannot throw away, I carry tissues. I survived. I adapted. I overcame.

But what if I hadn’t?

What if I had been less neurotic? Less of a Boy Scout?

Would I have simply sat there, contemplating my life choices and the fragility of modern society?

Probably.

And this is where that LinkedIn statistic starts to feel less like corporate fluff and more like a quiet indictment. Because barriers to hygiene aren’t just broken sinks or empty dispensers. They are the small, everyday failures of communal care. The moments we choose not to look out for each other. The micro-abandonments.

We like to think of ourselves as evolved beings technologically advanced, emotionally intelligent, capable of sending emails that say “per my last message” with just the right amount of passive aggression.

And yet we cannot tell the next person there is no toilet paper.

So here is my humble proposal that we return to restroom ethics. A renaissance of decency. A revival of what I will now formally call The Code of the Stall:

1. If there is no toilet paper, you warn the next person. Immediately. Urgently. Without shame.
2. If you have extra tissues, you become a benevolent deity and offer them.
3. If the sink is broken, you do not let others discover this mid-lather like some cruel social experiment.
4. And above all, you remember that today it is them, tomorrow it is you.

Because in the grand, unpredictable, occasionally horrifying journey of life, we are all just trying to make it through the day with a little dignity intact.

And sometimes, dignity looks like a whisper outside a stall door.

“No paper in there.”

Be the person who says it.