Star Trek: 10 Crazy Facts About Ferengi
6. Everything Has A Fee
When you're dealing with Ferengi, everything has a fee. That doesn't just mean the fees they hide in paperwork for various business dealings. It includes all aspects of everyday life.
On the Ferengi home world of Ferenginar, there are deposit boxes everywhere. If you enter someone's house, you drop a slip of Latinum in the box. If you need to use the bathroom, that's another slip of Latinum in the box. No matter what you do on the home world, it's going to cost you a bit of Gold-Pressed Latinum.
Say you need to go to the Ferengi Commerce Authority to deal with an issue and want to use the elevator. That could cost you approximately three strips of Latinum, depending on the going rate at that time. The stairs are only one. As you can imagine, most Ferengi take the stairs.
The ritual isn't as prevalent once you leave Ferenginar, most likely because very few non-Ferengi are going to pay a slip of Latinum to use the bathroom. But it still comes up from time to time.