The Lean Bathroom

Lean bathroom guide page

My mission in life? To fix bathrooms for craft workers.

Because “how goes” the bathrooms, is “how goes” the people — and “how goes” the people, is how goes the project.

I’ve been on jobsites where the executives have beautiful bathrooms in the project trailers… and the workers are handed a porta potty baking in the summer sun with no wash station in sight.

There is no faster way to tell your crew you don’t care about them than that.

And here’s what most leaders don’t realize:

🚽 Graffiti in the bathroom? That’s not a maintenance problem.
That’s a morale problem.

It means your workforce is disgruntled — and a disgruntled crew doesn’t build great projects.

Graffiti is not a natural phenomenon.
It is not natural.
It is a sign there is contention between the delivery team and the workers.

But flip it around.

When workers walk into a clean, air-conditioned, well-stocked bathroom —
one with a plunger in every stall,
hooks for their hard hats,
and signage that says “we thought of you” —
something shifts.
They take pride.
They stop trashing it.
They show up differently.

A clean bathroom creates a clean jobsite mindset.

Here’s the challenge I’m putting to every superintendent, PM, and executive reading this:

👉 Go look at your crew’s bathrooms TODAY.
Not the ones in the trailer.
Not yours.
THEIRS.
And it should be OURS.

Are they remarkable? Or are they an afterthought?

The more respect you show the crews,
the more respect the crew shows the project.

That is just how it works.

It’s that simple. And it’s that important.