It is. But it's also petty rule following culture. Like today I needed the toilet in a big shopping centre and I very politely asked the woman in the Costa I was right next to if I could use their one, a woman who could surely tell from my dress, pronunciation and general demeanour that I am not some kind of pee spraying, toilet roll unravelling oik. But no, customers only, and I had the choice of either buying one of their crap coffees, trekking at least ten minutes in this heat to the sole public toilets in an adjacent building and back again (assuming her directions were correct) or keeping it in and rejoining my girlfriend to look at clothes before we moved anyway to the next shop which was closer to said toilet. To which I chose the final option, meaning I of course ended up the bad guy because I wasn't concentrating on what my girlfriend was showing me.