Okay, so the guys out there in Blog-land won't be able to relate as much to this piece, I'm sure, but I'm hoping I'll find some fellow commiserators amongst the ladies.
I have a thing with public restrooms. To put it bluntly, I hate them. My maternal grandmother had a pretty severe case of OCD, and I'm fairly certain that's where I get my base fear of the toilet stalls that exist outside of the comfort of my own home.
I often gets chills when I enter a stall - literal chills. I shake in revulsion. I have been known to walk an entire line of 30+ stalls in order to find the least offensive offering. And I wash my hands repeatedly and obsessively, doing everything in my power to avoid touching faucets, handles, and doors afterward.
Because of all this, I am very fond of the trend toward automatic bathroom fixtures. I'm a HUGE fan of automatic sinks and paper towel dispensers (or even better environmentally-speaking, automatic air dryers), and the advent of the automatic soap dispenser is a thing of true beauty. I can't wait for EVERY establishment to get on board.
But the one device that continually picks at my sanity is the automatic toilet. Why can't they get this damn thing right????
I guarantee that every woman out there has experienced the following situation: Enter stall. Do your thing. And just a few seconds before you're ready for it, the toilet flushes. Sigh of frustration. Okay, NOW you're ready. But the toilet isn't gonna flush again, as you didn't sit back down and activate the sensors. You try waving your hand at the sensor, maybe put your foot in front of it to simulate a seated body. Nothing. So you hunt and search for the elusive "manual" button, which is of course too small to hit with your foot, and therefore you are left with the disgusting task of having to TOUCH THE TOILET AFTER ALL.
Not only has the entire purpose of the automatic toilet been defeated, you've also succeeded in 1) wasting water and 2) boiling your brain into a barely-controlled fury.
And I've actually been in stalls where the exact OPPOSITE situation occurs. Enter stall, do your thing, finish, wait. Wait. Wait. And nothing happens. So, certain that the automatic toilet mechanism is on the fritz, you begin your search for the aforementioned manual button. And just as you get right down there, with your face hovering mere disgusting inches from the toilet, guess what? Flush. Not only is it aggravating, it's totally, completely, undeniably repulsive.
Why can't these people get the damn things RIGHT??? Is the timing really THAT hard to manage? Are the female engineers assigned to designing the mechanism the fastest wipes in the West or what?!? (Sorry, gross out factor.)
You know, if the timing on these things is THAT difficult to figure out, then just leave be. Gimme an old-school manual flush handle any day of the week - at least I can hit THAT thing with my foot.
Oh, and while we're at it, can we get on the task of creating an automatic toilet paper dispenser? The female populace thanks you.
2 comments:
have you been to the bathroom at the pink taco in century city? they have the BEST automatic hand dryers i have ever seen. they're made by the people at dyson... that's who should be making the automatic toilets, dyson!
YES - I ADORE the Dyson dryers!! It's like sticking your hands into the jet stream coming off of an airplane's wing - your hands are dried almost instantaneously!!! I love them!!! Go Dyson.
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