irrelevancy: bathroom fixtures

[mamajoan]

This past three days I've been in training on a software tool that our developers use. The training takes place in the same building where I work, on a different floor: the 8th floor, which has just been completely remodeled and redesigned with brand-new training rooms and conference rooms. It is super-slick and fancy. Just stepping off the elevator makes you feel like you're at a whole different company, heh. And the training rooms are very nice, and high-tech, although predictably enough almost everyone in the class had difficulty getting the wifi to work.

I noticed when I went into the women's bathroom on this floor that the toilets are auto-flush and the sink faucets are also automatic, but the hand-soap dispensers are manual. I thought it was kind of funny, because on the 4th floor where my office is it's the reverse -- the toilets and soap dispensers are automatic but the sink faucets are manual, which I've always thought was odd anyway. Why would you go to the trouble of putting in automatic soap dispensers on the sinks but not automatic faucets?

I guess if it's going to be one or the other, it makes more sense for it to be the faucets, because that would be what you touch last; if you use your dirty hand to turn the water on, then wash your hands, then put your clean hand on the now-dirty faucet to turn it off, that would be kind of defeating the point.

At Ruthie's preschool they've taught the kids to use a paper towel to turn off the faucet after washing hands, which is better in the sanitary sense, but worse in the water-conservation sense, alas.

Comments

[lapenn.livejournal.com]

and worse in the paper conservation sense. criminy. I guess it's good for little kids, as they might have problems wiping, but the vast majority of us are just fine. I've swabbed all sorts of stuff for bacterial growth (multiple times over multiple years -- it's a common general biology experiment, and I've taught that lab tons of times). you know what's way more nasty than bathrooms? shoes. and our mouths. and door handles. remotes and cell phones, interestingly, weren't so bad.