Or designers restricted by moronic environmental legislation.
I recently gutted and renovated all of my wet areas. My 40 yo Caroma loo went to the dump and I ended up (after some shopping around in disbelief) compromising on a fancy new all-ceramic dunny with a 4.5L (full flush) cistern, fully compliant with current water-saving legislation.
There was one other dunny with a 6.5L flush (very rare now) but to offset that so as to retain its water-conserving stars, it had the most stupidly small water-holding bowl down the bottom, with a s-bend having a cross-sectional area barely big enough to pass a golf ball through. I just could not believe what I was looking at on the showroom floor. Who or what is supposed to shit in that thing? A toddler or your pet cat? WTF?
Since installing my brand new dunny several weeks ago I have not managed ONE SINGLE shit that could be fully dissapeared with just a single full flush. I think that I haven't been getting enough fiber in my diet lately and I did a bit of doozy Saturday afternoon. That big man poo took SIX full flushes to get rid of, - that's 27 liters of water! My trusty old Caroma would have gobbled down that turd in a single flush without so much as a burp and less than one third the water usage.
In addition to the increased water usage my new, modern so-called "water-conserving" toilet brings in reality, is an another inconvenience that I could happily live without . Because the bowl is designed to hold maybe only half (if that) the volume of water that the old Caroma did, the circumference at the waters edge is much smaller. This means that every damn crap starts sliding down the inside of the bowl from above the water line, mandating a clean up afterwards with the toilet brush every fucking time. And guess what? When you have a toilet brush full of crap you have to flush AGAIN to clean the fucking thing and waste more water again.
Starkly in contrast with my old beloved Caroma it was possible to sometimes briefly question ones sanity, because you'd stand and glance down up after being positively sure that you've dumped your load, but there would be nothing visible in the bowl. A damn ghost shit! - not obstructed by a stupidly narrow bottom of the bowl it would literally make its own way at least partly through the s-bend under the momentum of its own initial velocity.
Hope I haven't ruined anyone's dinner.