I’ve noticed a newish phenomenon lately that I have to comment on. It’s the fearsome semi-automatic public restroom. All-automatic is more convenient but semi-automatic can provide for some fun people watching as they try to figure out how (and if) to work all the bathroom gadgets.
Anyway, you go into a stall to take care of business but…beware! You could be up against the dreaded Auto-Flusher. Which is good and efficient in theory… except when it flushes before you’re ready. I bet many unsuspecting souls have had the pee scared out of them by a sudden, high-decibel, premature toilet flush. (Okay, bad pun. I’ll refrain.) And then there are the overzealous toilets that flush more than once when you’re in the stall. Overachieving is good in theory but….
So, you (hopefully) survive the vicious automatic toilet and go out to wash your hands. It looks like an auto-faucet so you hold your hands there and…nothing. Then you start waving your hands like a fool, waiting. Your goal goes from getting your hands clean to actually getting the faucet gods to smile down on you and turn on the damn water at all.
It finally does (one temperature fits all) and you go for the soap, feeling overconfident after getting the water to trickle out. You wave your hand under the little soap spout but, oh, this one isn’t automatic after all, and you feel like an idiot for assuming you could wave your hands and magically be soaped. You break down and get your suds the old-fashioned way and then battle the temperamental water supply again. You’re almost done except now you must face…somehow drying your sparkling clean hands.
First, the towel dispensers. The automatic dispenser is popping up everywhere, even in the crummiest of gas station bathrooms, and it’s fun to watch people address these. Even more fun is seeing someone wave at an old-fashioned, you-do-the-work paper towel dispenser, then swear at it when they grasp that their magic has failed them.
Or you might have to reckon with an automatic hand dryer. There’s a whole variety of evil-doers in this category. There’s the simple put-your-hands-underneath-and-a-gentle-warm-breeze-will-blow-over-them-and-dry-them-halfway variety of dryer. These are usually clearly marked, telling you to wave your hands (saving you the embarrassment of waving at the wrong type of machine) and they do an okay job of drying your hands if you’ve got enough time to stand there and wait.
Last weekend, I summoned the nerve to try the newest kind of hand dryer in a public place – it sits low on the wall and you stick your hands down INSIDE of it then slowly draw them out as air blows on them. You want me to put my hands WHERE? I did it but I drew my hands out too fast because, you know, I didn’t want some kind of dryer monster to come out, grab them and suck me in. My hands were still half wet but whatever. I’m alive to tell about it.
Lastly there’s a terrifying breed of hardcore Super Blowers that have cropped up and I’ll confess, I was most hesitant to try these. With good reason. They blow so hard they almost take your skin off, and they’re as loud as a jet taking off ten feet away. However, the good news? Along with your skin, they remove any sign of moisture.
All this technology just to heed nature’s call. I guess it’s a few steps up from going out in the backyard, through the snow, uphill (both ways) to an outhouse that smells like a barn, where you get frostbite on your butt….
I’m off to do something productive with my imagination now other than ponder the intricacies of bathroom design and technology, but the next time you’re in a public restroom, stop for a second and watch people and how they approach the sink and dryer. One never knows where one will find blog content. *g*
So true! ROTFL!
The auto-flush gave us a serious delay on potty training our oldest. He was so little, the sensor didn’t pick up that he was still sitting there. It flushed, he screamed and jumped off, and that was the end for potty training for six months. He was convinced that all toilets would try to eat him!
Lol Amy – you are too funny. I like the auto-flush but hate it when people don’t realize it didn’t flush for whatever reason. Gah! But I do like the super hardcore blowers. Kinda. I mean the *work* – but they’re also super hard core, so they blow your skin around and it makes you feel like the machine is judging you because it’s squooshing your hand fat all over the place.
O_o Heh – obviously I’ve got my own neuroses that go well beyond crazy public restrooms. [OH! And/but have you see the automatic toilet seat dispensers??!!]
Very funny, but true!
For potty training with the auto-flushers, you have to stick a post-it note or a piece of toilet paper over the sensor until the wee one is done. You’ll have to moisten the toilet paper at the top to get it to stick. Then take the paper off and let it flush away. I learned the hard way. It is no fun cleaning a puddle of pee off the bathroom floor at Disney World – the Most Magical Place on Earth – with very forceful flushers!
I love this blog spot. I have been laughing so hard. I traveled with my husband for eight months last year. He was working and I went with him. Each public washroom was a new adventure. Automatic toilets that were too sensitive to flush it yourself ones. Same with the washing of the hands and the drying of them. I love those super dryers that make your skin bunch up around your wrists. Your hands look like they are melting but they are dry very quickly. It is amazing how many people don’t wash their hands ~ not a laughing matter. Love the comments about toilet training ~ this should be a new entry in all child care books.
ROTFLOL Amy you’ve just said it all!!! I love it that you don’t have to touch anything, but hate when the toilet flushes before you’re done. Especially when you just get the paper liner on the seat and are turning around to sit and the damn thing flushes the liner down before you get a chance to sit on it!
They just installed the automatic flushers at my work. THANK GOD cuz some people didn’t know how to operate the old-fashioned ones. But some also don’t realize there’s a little button under the radar screen to help if you get flushed before you are ready.
Oh – I used one of those hand dryers where you stick your hands inside. It was at a high-end department store (I was browsing – the store not the bathroom) and my friend had to tell me how it worked. I just stared at it and went ‘huh?’.
I will also admit the towel dispenser with the little red light? I can’t get the darn things to work half the time.
I love the auto-flushers, though the high-pitched sound some of them make right before flushing has frightened a number of years off my life, because some people seem to forget how to flush a toilet when they’re in public. Nothing like leaving your mess for someone else to flush away. However, I do dislike the auto-flushers that are overly vigorous and flush while you’re sitting there, spraying water all over your hindquarters.
And, yes, I sit rather than hover. So for all the ceiling-dwellers who appear to have dangled from the rafters while peeing, thus getting it all over the seat and (you guessed it) leaving it there for the next poor chump to deal with, PLEASE wipe up your own pee! I learned long ago to reach for the toilet paper immediately on entering a stall and to wipe the seat thoroughly. That guarantees no wet behinds (except when in a super-flusher stall, at least) AND that I’ll have enough T.P. at the conclusion of business. No drip-drying or waiting for a kind person in an adjoining stall to pass me some.
Technology is amazing, and yet, when they can install auto-flushers, auto-faucets, auto-soap and paper towel dispensers, why is it that they cannot hang a restroom stall door so that the latch actually engages, keeping it closed? We can put a man on the moon but can’t seem to install bathroom stall doors that truly provide privacy. What’s up with that?
JV excellent point! LOL So funny that the bathroom stuff is a sticking point with so many (pun intended.) Glad I’m not alone in my amusement/frustration!
Amy – so funny. Those the hand dryers that you stick your hand into are called the Dyson Airblade. http://www.restroomdirect.com/dyson-airblade.aspx They can be intimidating, but they are super fast.
The turbo ones that blow your skin off are the Xlerators. http://www.restroomdirect.com/xlerator.aspx
Bathrooms are getting crazy these days. But the hand dryers are better for the environment than paper towels….