It’s interesting how you get used to things. For example, lots of places (my office included) have auto-flush toilets. There’s some groovy sensor that seems to know when you’re done (more like it just flushes at your slightest movement which really sucks when you’re still...um...taking care of business) and flushes the thing for you; hands free, fewer germs, less thought – yadda yadda yadda.
So what’s funny is when you are somewhere that doesn’t have an auto-flush toilet and you stand up, put yourself back together (hopefully managing to avoid having any toilet paper stuck to your shoe), leave the stall and begin washing your hands – only then realizing you didn’t hear a flush and understanding all at once that you must have expected it to flush all by itself! You go back, flush the toilet with your foot, and then wash your hands again...just for good measure.
Ok...so maybe that’s just me...
Then there’s the auto-release paper towel thingy where you, again, wave your hand in front of a funky sensor and with a quiet “Whirr” a pre-specified length of paper towel is released into your wet, waiting hands.
I could say a lot of things about the benefits and downfalls of these bits of technology, but I won’t. I won’t because I think it all is such an improvement over the “air” dryer which never exactly dries your hands completely or blows cold air which doesn’t do anything. Or, what about the horrible “one towel” thing that most gas stations used to use where you had the metal box with one very long towel hanging out that had been sewn into a circle and you just pulled the thing to a hopefully-dry section while trying not to think of what else the thing has been used to dry. The tri-fold paper towels are just wasteful and mostly useless because unless you use about fifteen of them, they don’t dry your hands in the first place. Oh...and wiping your hands on your pants is just wrong unless you’d rather have wet hand prints on your rear.
I didn’t even mention the auto-faucet that is never quite warm enough and never runs quite long enough to wet your hands, much less strip them of whatever soap you’ve used. And that’s only IF you’re one of the few people that actually wash their hands religiously when you’ve used the restroom. You know who you are. (Don’t get me started on that one!)
And then there’s the auto-soap dispenser that disperses a pre-measured amount of soap (foam or otherwise) into your waiting hands... But even these only work half the time and I find that I most always need more than the pre-measured amount the first “shot” gives me. What happened to a good old-fashioned bar of soap?
My thought is that even though the auto-functions of these neat restroom gadgets often leave much to be desired, the basic thought behind them is sound; to help the general public touch fewer things and therefore hopefully reduce illness. That is, of course, if you use them the way they were designed to be used – and that, friends, is a whole other subject.
TTFN
JMS
(OK...what was that?)
So what’s funny is when you are somewhere that doesn’t have an auto-flush toilet and you stand up, put yourself back together (hopefully managing to avoid having any toilet paper stuck to your shoe), leave the stall and begin washing your hands – only then realizing you didn’t hear a flush and understanding all at once that you must have expected it to flush all by itself! You go back, flush the toilet with your foot, and then wash your hands again...just for good measure.
Ok...so maybe that’s just me...
Then there’s the auto-release paper towel thingy where you, again, wave your hand in front of a funky sensor and with a quiet “Whirr” a pre-specified length of paper towel is released into your wet, waiting hands.
I could say a lot of things about the benefits and downfalls of these bits of technology, but I won’t. I won’t because I think it all is such an improvement over the “air” dryer which never exactly dries your hands completely or blows cold air which doesn’t do anything. Or, what about the horrible “one towel” thing that most gas stations used to use where you had the metal box with one very long towel hanging out that had been sewn into a circle and you just pulled the thing to a hopefully-dry section while trying not to think of what else the thing has been used to dry. The tri-fold paper towels are just wasteful and mostly useless because unless you use about fifteen of them, they don’t dry your hands in the first place. Oh...and wiping your hands on your pants is just wrong unless you’d rather have wet hand prints on your rear.I didn’t even mention the auto-faucet that is never quite warm enough and never runs quite long enough to wet your hands, much less strip them of whatever soap you’ve used. And that’s only IF you’re one of the few people that actually wash their hands religiously when you’ve used the restroom. You know who you are. (Don’t get me started on that one!)
And then there’s the auto-soap dispenser that disperses a pre-measured amount of soap (foam or otherwise) into your waiting hands... But even these only work half the time and I find that I most always need more than the pre-measured amount the first “shot” gives me. What happened to a good old-fashioned bar of soap?
My thought is that even though the auto-functions of these neat restroom gadgets often leave much to be desired, the basic thought behind them is sound; to help the general public touch fewer things and therefore hopefully reduce illness. That is, of course, if you use them the way they were designed to be used – and that, friends, is a whole other subject.
TTFN
JMS
(OK...what was that?)
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