Behavioral
A Grand Rapids, Michigan, toilet paper enthusiast named Bill Jarrett argues that previous polls have been too small. He wants a national referendum with at least one million votes, with the result to decide a "national toilet paper hanging way" to be enforced by "the toilet paper police".[119] Jarrett refuses to reveal his own preference; he even removed the toilet paper from his house's bathrooms before inviting in an AP reporter for an interview. "I'm not saying because I don't want to influence the vote."[120] Voting requires the purchase of a $5 debate kit. His value proposition to the nation: assuming that one can spend half an hour per year searching for the end of the toilet paper, the United States should save 90 million hours at home per year—and $300 million at the workplace.[121]
Toilet paper orientation has been used rhetorically as the ultimate issue that government has no business dictating, in letters to the editor protesting the regulation of noise pollution[122] and stricter requirements to get a divorce.[123] In 2006, protesting New Hampshire's ban on smoking in restaurants and bars, representative Ralph Boehm (R-Litchfield) asked "Will we soon be told which direction the toilet paper must hang from the roll?"[124]
In a column in the Houston Chronicle, Jack Brewer observes that it only takes five seconds to turn the roll "the right way" around (over), which is much less than the time it takes to "start a fuss" with his wife.[125]
In a column in The Grand Rapids Press, Karin Orr relates her chance discovery that her husband and sister both turn the toilet paper around in others' houses—and in opposite directions. Orr writes, "You just can never really know another person."[126]
David O'Connor's 2005 book Henderson's House Rules: The Official Guide to Replacing the Toilet Paper and Other Domestic Topics of Great Dispute aims to solve disagreements with a minimum of debate or compromise by offering authoritative, reasonable rules.[127] The "House Rule" for toilet paper is over and out, and a full page is dedicated to a diagram of this orientation. But O'Connor writes that "if a female household member has a strong preference for the toilet paper to hang over and in, against the wall, that preference prevails. It is admittedly an odd preference, but women use toilet paper far more often than men—hence the rule."[128]