Urinal etiquette might seem like a cheap, immature thing to discuss, but that can’t be further from the truth. Bathroom conduct is all about making the process as efficient and clean as possible. Everything operates better in a restroom where strict, uncompromising rules are present. I’m taking it upon myself to give the men of MSU a little refresher course.

Ladies, while you can’t heed the advice of many of these rules, you should feel free to force them on the men in your life.

The first — and easily most important — aspect of a trip to the bathroom is speed. Walk in, find yourself a spot, do what needs to be done, wash your hands and go about your business. There’s no need to complicate the process beyond that.

Answering nature’s call should be treated like getting through airport security. In fact, I propose hiring a bouncer to stand outside the men’s room in case people don’t obey the rules. Anybody caught lollygagging is gone. You don’t have to pee at home, but you can’t pee here.

Aside from speed, the other important thing you need to remember when at a urinal is efficiency. Always keep a distance of at least one urinal between you and anyone else in the bathroom. These designated “buffer urinals” will act a protective barrier from conversation, contact and male-to-male sexual tension. If all others are occupied, then do not use one of the buffer spaces. For all intents and purposes, those are for decoration only. If these rules were followed, those urinals wouldn’t even need to have any plumbing.

If the spots are filled, then it’s acceptable to slowly, calmly find your way to a stall. If even those are full, go outside. Just by all means, don’t use a buffer.

Now sometimes while searching for a vacant stall, some people will knock to see if they’re occupied. This is preferred over peeking through cracks in the door, or blindly opening doors, but isn’t required. Use your best judgement to make sure you choose the right approach.

Occasionally — in a severe breach of etiquette — a stall’s previous occupant will forget to flush. Don’t be a hero, just find somewhere else to go. That stops being your problem the moment you walk in the other direction. If the bathroom is extremely busy, then all the waiting men in the bathroom must form a line until one among them is brave enough to go eliminate the problem. Certainly, it’s not going to be me.

In a nearly empty bathroom, a person in a stall must cough or shuffle a newspaper to let anyone else in the place know they aren’t alone. There are few moments in life worse than mistakenly thinking you’re the only person in an empty restroom. This rule is as much about protecting yourself as protecting other people.

Speaking is completely out of the question. The only time it’s acceptable to talk is if you find a dead person in one of the stalls. In that case, as said before, it’s best to move on and leave the problem for the next person. Also, friends of more than five years can speak to each other, but only if one of them is finishing a story that was started outside the restroom. In that case, the friends can either look down or at the wall directly in front of them while speaking and nowhere else. If that’s too difficult to remember, just know there should be no eye contact.

Although this might seem like a litany of unnecessary regulations, in reality it’s not enough. There’s only so much you can cover in the space of one opinion column. That’s why I wrote my own 800-page manual describing — in detail — the rules of bathroom conduct. I am still looking for a publisher, however, so it probably won’t make it to the bookshelves anytime soon.

In the meantime, I urge you to take these words to heart. Treat a trip to the bathroom with the professionalism and maturity you’d show at a job interview. Together, we can get the restroom community to do a dirty thing the clean way.

Ian Johnson is the State News opinion writer. Reach him at john2806@msu.edu.