Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?

This is a modern piece of observational, stand-up–style humor that riffs on a common roadside experience in North America: gas station restrooms kept locked, requiring customers to ask for a key or code. The joke likely circulated orally and later through joke books, email forwards, and early internet quote collections, where it is typically credited to “Anonymous.” Its setup depends on the shared expectation that such bathrooms are often poorly maintained; the punchline pretends the lock is to prevent the unlikely event that a passerby might clean the facility, highlighting the mismatch between the inconvenience imposed on customers and the low standard of cleanliness.

The humor comes from inversion and sarcasm. Instead of accepting the usual rationale for locked restrooms (preventing misuse), the speaker pretends the real fear is that a customer might do something beneficial—clean the bathroom. The line critiques neglect and low standards in public facilities, implying that the restroom is so dirty that “cleaning” would be an unexpected, even threatening, event. More broadly, it pokes at businesses that prioritize control and risk management over basic maintenance and hospitality, using a quick rhetorical question to expose the absurdity of the situation.

1) “Why do they lock the bathrooms at gas stations? Are they afraid someone will clean them?”
2) “Why are gas station restrooms always locked? Are they worried somebody might clean them?”
3) “Why do they keep the restroom key behind the counter? Afraid someone will clean it?”