I stopped at Carl’s Jr. on Lonetree Blvd. in Rocklin on October 9, 2009. I have no idea what I ate; if they had those Chicken Parmesean sandwiches, I had one of those…but I’m not sure. On a side note, their Big Carl with an extra bun is a great way to enjoy that sandwich.  There’s even a Facebook Fan Page and Group Page for that fantastic “modified” Big Carl!

This is a quickie…I’ll get right onto the bathroom. First, I thought the “hammered steel” look was great on the stalls. I don’t know whether it really was hammered metal or just a “skin”-type dealio. Either way, it was pretty damn cool. Other than that, the bathroom was pretty standard…paper towels (yay!), a handwashing reminder (complete with Carl’s Jr. star), and a door that pushed open from inside the bathroom.

People forget, but that last one is pretty freakin’ important. Let’s face it…some people just don’t wash their hands. Sure that’s gross—and can spread disease—but ya know, people are gonna do whatever they’re gonna do. The least stores can do is make that door open out from the inside, so if you don’t wanna touch it you don’t have to (and you don’t have to waste paper towels). I won’t recommend a Chuck Norris kick to open it, but a gentle push with your toes oughta do the trick. 4 rolls for the stalls, overall cleanliness, paper towels in a fast food joint, and that door!

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“I once got busy in Burger King bathroom“—ah, the immortal words of Humpty and Digital Underground…

I dropped by on 10/5/09, and while there was no “gettin’ busy” (hey, this is a family site!) I did take photos of the bathroom and even reviewed it (even if I am two weeks late in posting it).

As a nice touch, they kept the red-and-yellow BK color scheme through the bathroom. I especially love the hand-washing instructions posted near the sink and the reminder to employees to wash their hands over the paper towel holder. It seems slightly more thought-out to post them on the door though, as a “last-minute” reminder to wash your hands in case you “forgot.” Three rolls for being a clean well thought-out bathroom and another half because I love handwashing instruction posters (seriously, has it come to this? We need to tell people how to wash their hands???)

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Shop Smart. Shop S-mart. Oops, wrong tagline. The weird thing about this bathroom was…I wasn’t even shopping for pets (or pet supplies). So maybe I was in a Sam Raimi movie…I was gonna say “complete with Sumatran rat-monkey” but that was Peter Jackson, not Sam Raimi. I always get their earlier work confused…

Oh well. Random movie references aside, this was a pretty average bathroom. Clean (and—thankfully—free of rat-monkeys). I’ve noticed what seems to me to be an odd trend, of providing toilet paper for the baby-changing tables. Sure, it beats using paper towels; I always thought baby skin a little too sensitive for toilet paper (especially that found in public bathrooms—although I’ve also noticed that really improving—again, thankfully). In picture four you might also notice the “Employees Must Wash Hands” sign—appreciated since using the bathroom pretty much requires you to wash your hands (come on people, you miss sometimes) this seems like an odd place to find that request. Basic restroom, clean and relatively standard design (more than just let’s throw something up and call it a bathroom though). Three rolls.

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A buddy of mine was craving pancakes for dinner the other night (9/22/09) and asked if I wanted to go…I immediately thought “New Bathroom!” and agreed (I must be getting old or too into this Bathroom Goodies thing…). He ended up getting the New York Cheesecake pancakes (they have little bits of cheesecake cooked in, which must be terrible health-wise but sure taste good—I’d had em before). After much deliberation between the slab o’ ham and mini blueberry pancakes, I settled on the pancakes. I like ham, but restaurant ham tends to be overly fatty (I’m not a health nut…that’s probably pretty obvious by now…but I’ve never liked eating fat or gristle…yuck). Ham and filet…gotta be careful where you get ‘em. Pork chops, too.

So…the bathroom. First, red seems to be the prevalent color (if we don’t treat white as a color…and in fact, in paint, it’s the absence of color, so…), which really surprised me at first. Blue I could understand, since there’s so much blue in IHOP’s logo, design, etc. (maybe they felt the need to balance it out, or maybe the womens’ bathroom is blue…hmm). On further consideration, it makes perfect sense…IHOP uses red to accent their logo (and, as you can see here, the mens’ restroom). Check out the fourth picture for instructions on hand-washing (they provide the instructions in both Spanish and English…but not Spanglish). They even give you pictures, just in case you don’t speak either. Look closely and you’ll see someone autographed the soap dispenser…BRILLIANT! The fifth and final picture shows what I think are light switches (maybe key-controlled?). If anyone knows how these work, please share! Three-and-a-half rolls for a clean well-designed bathroom (especially with the red accent reflecting the logo), crazy light switches, and an autographed soap dispenser.

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