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    When you gotta go, you gotta go. But sometimes, it’ll cost ya.

    That was the lesson one woman learned, in a major way, after making a bathroom pit stop at a local restaurant in Erin, Tennessee.

    More on Shine: What Can I do to Avoid Germs in a Public Restroom?

    The bizarre tale began when Patricia Barnes stopped into the Flood Zone to use the restroom, which she did, before leaving without making a purchase. Then, a few days after her powder-room visit, Barnes received a handwritten note—mailed to her home—saying she owed the restaurant $5.

    “I just feel like I’ve been violated,” she told WSMV-TV in Nashville, whose reporters broke the story last week after a several-month investigation (the incident occurred in late October). In addition, she said on the Today show Thursday, "I didn't feel it was a crime. I'd been in to plenty of restaurants here in this town, and other towns, and, you know, other states."

    Turns out the local sheriff helped track Barnes down by running her license plate, all as a favor to the owner of the restaurant. The owner was miffed that the non-customer ignored a sign about the bathroom being for customers only, and that non-customers had to pay $5 for the privilege.

    "She was one of these I'm-going-to-do-this-anyway kind of people," Flood Zone proprietor Lisa (who would not give her last name) told Yahoo! Shine. Barnes, she said, came into the restaurant, "looked up at the [wall] menu like she was going to order, said 'Let me just wash my hands,' stayed in the bathroom for, like, 20 minutes," and then left. Lisa explained that she'd only recently put up the sign about the $5 charge, and that it was in response to a broken toilet at the convenience store across the street sending "12 to 15 people a day" to her bathroom, which caused constant messes that no one had time to clean.

    More on Yahoo!: Commercial Restroom Trend: US Customers Desire More Privacy in Public Restrooms

    But Barnes, who could not be reached by Shine, told WSMV-TV that she had first asked permission to use the facilities. 
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