I have a small proposal to combat the problem of public toilet stalls without toilet paper. If you notice that a stall is missing toilet paper, take a reasonable amount from an adjacent stall and put it atop the toilet paper dispenser in the stall missing the paper. This does two things: first it signals that the stall is missing paper. For those unfortunate enough to use the stall without noticing, it provides a source of backup paper that can be replenished after use. Either way, it avoids the case of somebody using a stall, needing toilet paper, and then finding themselves without.

Of course, this does not handle the case when all of the stalls in a restroom have run out. It also doesn't handle the similar case of a one stall restroom. To handle these special cases, a refinement of the protocol would be to have the person that consumes the last bit of toilet paper reserve a small amount at the end of the roll to act as the signal piece. To maintain the signal, this piece would have to remain unused, which means that toilet stall customers would have to be more careful to avoid using stalls that are out of paper. After all, they could use the signalling piece of paper, but that would eliminate the signal for the next person. On the other hand, the signalling piece of paper could now be made significantly smaller than it was in the first version of the protocol, when it was able to be used.

Some people think about world peace, some think about curing cancer, I apparantly think about this... 

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