Restrooms Have Germs
Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 15, 2010
Okay, so I am going to talk about bathrooms. I know…. I am such a guy. Seriously though, I think people who design these things have totally missed the boat. It was much easier 20 years ago to keep them pesky germs off your hands than it is now. When I was in High School, I volunteered at a hospital and I learned the proper technique for washing hands. Today, I go into some bathrooms and I have NO ability to do that. <People say I think about the weirdest things a little too much> The process today:
- Stick your dirty hands under the faucet. The faucet magically comes on and you do not have to touch the knobs.
- Stick your dirty wet hands under the soap dispenser. The foamy soap comes out almost as if it knew something was there to squirt it on.
- Shake off your now-clean hands and stick them under the hand-dryer that also happens to know that you are there and comes on without you touching anything.
- Walk to the door, stand there with your clean-hands and the door magically opens for you. Oh, wait. Let me try that again. Walk to the door, grab the handle with your now clean hands and open the door.
Okay, in what universe does that make sense? Not all bathrooms are like this, I know. Melissa, my darling wife, has pointed out that some bathrooms have new handles that you can use your arm with instead of your hand. Great! Yes, there are some bathrooms that still use paper towels, which are better. However, people think that they are not friendly for the environment (see the end of my post for why I am not so certain about that). With paper towels, you can grab the door handle with the paper-towel and open the door that way. The problem then, of course, is that people who design these bathrooms don’t think about that and don’t give you a place to throw the paper towel away. So, you are now stuck with a fashionable paper towel in your hand until you can find a trash can. Inevitably, or so it seems, you just go back into the bathroom and throw it away there and open the door with you bare hand. Genius!!!!
Okay, now for my short rant on hand dryers. In what universe are hand-blow-dryers environmentally friendly? These things are like 220V 20+ Amp machines! How many paper towels do you have to burn to create enough electricity to blow-dry your hands? Unless these things are super-powered by some mad-awesome solar-electric generators or something like that, how is this environmentally friendly? Okay, rant over for now. Have a nice day!
I’ve always marveled at the impossibility of keeping your hands clean from washing to exiting in a public bathroom. If there are towels, grab one and use it to open the door!