No, seriously. A lot of the time after I use one, it results in some kind of mess with varying degrees of subtlety. It’s been mildly irritating for years and I’m starting to feel like I’m missing something obvious.

Are you supposed to aim toward the center? To one side? High? Low? Into the drain/water?

I’ve tried aiming near the side so that the stream hits the urinal quietly and has a low angle of deflection, thinking it’ll minimize splash back. But sometimes it seems like there are tiny droplets in a radius around the stream and some flecks will get onto the outside of the urinal, which is no good.

I’ve tried aiming at the deepest part in the back of the urinal, hoping that the intense splashing from hitting it at close to a 90-degree angle will be counterbalanced by the greatest amount of surrounding urinal surface in the vicinity, but this is too optimistic and tends to deposit a fine mist on the floor between me and my target.

I’ve tried aiming downwards at the drain, or when it’s the style of urinal with a standing water level, at the back half of the water where it’s shallow. This is loudest and probably provokes silent judgment from anyone else unfortunate enough to be using the bathroom at the same time as me, but it doesn’t seem to be especially good at minimizing mess and in the case of standing water, has a low chance of splashing an actually threatening amount of liquid back in my direction.

Perhaps it’s just inevitable that this particular plumbing fixture comes with a little mess involved. In other areas of life we are fine with periodically cleaning in our Sisyphean struggles against the various avenues where dirt and grime accumulate. But I want to be a conscientious user of shared facilities, damn it. And there’s only so many times a guy can discreetly wipe off his shoe with a paper towel before going insane.

Please help.