To prevent splashback, I think.

I have never seen someone flush a urinal mid-piss, nor can I imagine offhand why someone would do that.

Well, I guess I can imagine, but none of the things I'm imagining are very compelling. Overwhelmingly smelly urine? Soothing white noise to help them manage the stress of peeing in front of someone? The childish joy of making water flow down the ceramic walls?

Mr alto calls it 'race the flush'! The idea is to try to get the rest of the urine out before the flush finishes, leaving the bowl non-yellow. As to why, I've no idea... also no idea if anyone else treats it as a game.

on preview - I vote 'childish joy', certainly in mr alto's case.

I do it occasionally and have NO idea why.

I rarely flush urinals at all, and I definitely would never do so with my delicate private parts exposed to the aerosol spray of thousands of previous pee'ers. Ick.

Yeah, I should really disclose that for all my protesting above, I do occasionally "psyche out" the motion-detector flush mechanism on the urinals at work. But that has nothing to do with the flush or my urination per se; I just have some unquellable need to mess with motion-detector mechanisms.

I've got the timing between allowable flushes down pretty close to exactly by now. And the urinal on the right has about a half-second longer of lag between "user has left" and the onset of flush than the urinal on the left.

Also, of the three automatic faucets over the sinks, the sound of water running from two of them is more or less identical in timbres, while the third one is "tuned" a bit lower. The response time for motion is close enough to identical across all three for the purposes of impromptu motion-detection faucet music purposes.

The motion/touch soap dispensers are also three of a kind, though one is a bit touchier than the other two when you want to evoke soap through touch.

So, as I was saying: guys who manually flush when they're peeing are compelete nutters.

Impatience and/or thinking you're done when you're not.

I have a real problem with this. Always have. Almost compulsive.

Weird.

You know, I have thought about Race the Flush, but more as a hilarious answer to the question than a real one.

I do feel like the flush would create more splash-back, albeit watered down splash-back.

Also. Good motion sensors are good, but bad motion sensors are bad. That is all.

There was a guy at my old job who did that. Sometimes 3 or 4 times (he was older). I never understood why or had the nerve to ask, but he also would wash his hands for, like, literally five minutes afterward, so I just assumed it was some sort of OCD thing.

ok, I think I'm revealing hanging out waaaaay to much with the guys here but 'race the flush' is the name of the game indeed, like altolinguistic's SO says - I know quite a few US guys who do it. Like, all of them (that I know! Not all US males. Oh, I'll shut up now.).

Also, I must start following cortex to the mens room now to catch his faucet concert.

that sounded vaguely dirty and only now did I realize...

Heh.

If I ever get really ambitious, I'll recruit a volunteer camera man and shoot a whole bathroom-music video. The two urinals have very, very different ringing tones despite being apparently identical in manufacture.

My boyfriend claims that it saves time, coworker Jeff does it and says that he wants the whole thing to be over faster, but I say it's a childish game. The delivery guy who picks up our deposit does not do this, but is a little frightened that I asked.

I love that you asked someone at random rhapsodie. I am not sure I could ask a strange woman about her urinary habits.

But stay tuned. . .*smile*

rhapsodie, you are the winner. this is obviously the way to solve the riddle, but i just can't bring myself to do it.

I have never seen someone flush a urinal mid-piss, nor can I imagine offhand why someone would do that.
I have seen guys do it, but only in movies. Perhaps it is to drown out the splashing sound, so nobody will know what they're doing?