h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

..a law unto themselves.
(1) Cubicle doors which are too near the toilet itself and open inwards with the result that you have to shuffle round one side of the toilet bowl in order to open the door in order to leave.

(2) The push-button locking train toilet door. This has 3 buttons on the inside: "open","close" and "lock". Simple enough. In some cases you need to press "lock" to unlock, in others just "open" will do. Invariably there will be no indication that the door is locked as the indicator bulb will have long since blown...so you end up too tense worrying about whether or not the door is locked to actually use the toilet at all.

I couldn't agree more. And what about the signs on the toilet doors in pubs? "Stallions" and "Fillies"; "Mars" and "Venus"; "Us" and "Them" being some of the more confusing examples I've come across...

"mna" and "fir" are about the only Irish words you'll see in Dublin without a translation - ladies and gents respectively.

I like the ones that don't have words at all - in Poland its a triangle for gents and a circle for ladies...perhaps a page on the international words/symbols for ladies and gents would be in order - it could save future embarassment

In Wales it's 'Merched' and 'Dunnion' (hope the spelling's right!) for Ladies and Gents, respectively.

For women, the problem of a small cubicle and doors that open inwards is made worse by the presence of a sanitaryware disposal bin which is always positioned so as to stop you getting in easily!

Those on the 13 hour flight I took yesterday were divided into a) folding inwards and therefore impossible for a woman carrying an infant to negotiate and b) opening outwards without warning to knock anyone queueing back into the aisle. There was an added complication of a vacant/engaged sign that had desynchronised itself from the lock and a random stewardess call button .
The loo doors at Schipol (Amsterdam) ladies also open outwards, but this is a good thing as it means you can take the mini-trolley they've introduced for hand luggage in with you.

The most confusing I know is 'Elton' and 'Olivia Newton' I once saw a poor confused Chinese Lady obviously trying to work it out.

Brilliant! "The one with a queue" and "The one without a queue" was the best recent example I've seen...

'The Fly' in Belfast does it where if you are too drunk you have to be able to distinguish the male and female symbols. Hard to do with blurred vision.

In Lesotho I once gave a mini-lecture (as a note-taking exercise)on genetics. When at the end I asked for questions, a diffident voice said "I think you have the male and female symbols the wrong way round" Guess I'd better not visit belfast on my own then.

The two worst toilet doors I've ever seen:

The cubicle doors in an international airport which had (intentional) two-inch gaps between the doors and the frames (although the mirrored ceilings made that problem almost irrelevant).

The cubicle doors in a toilet which all started 18 inches from the floor, including the end cubicle which was an Asian toilet.

Try putting the Asian toilet with the undercut doors on the half landing between floors. My cousin found this in a (cheap) hotel in France. When you looked down the passage to see if the cubicle was occupied, you could tell from the sight of male / female genitalia protruding below the bottom edge of the door.