Public Relief
When the hell did public lavatories get so complicated? I mean, my goodness, all anyone wants to do in there is use the loo, wash their hands and leave. What’s with all the bells and whistles?
I’m very particular about public facilities. I can’t go in a stall that has a floor to ceiling door. There has to be an escape route if the lock gets stuck or something. I’m claustrophobic. Don’t ask. I also don’t like certain kinds of locks. As a general rule, bigger and plastic is better. Small metal locks have more chance of getting stuck and then I’m locked in a tiny space, in a public building and what if everyone goes home without checking the loos or hearing my cries for help and I die right there in the stall, my last moments spent on a public bathroom floor. That, my friends, is not the way I want to go out. So all I ask for is a simple, big, plastic lock that is easy to use. Not always easy to find in the public domain, I tell you.
Then there’s the toilet roll dispensers. There’s always either those two giant rolls with some sort of sliding contraption at the bottom to indicate which roll you should use (which always gets stuck when one roll finishes) or the one that dispenses one sheet at a time. And it’s always one-ply toilet tissue, in fact less than one-ply, more like half-ply, if such a thing exists, so you have to yank out six pieces and construct some sort of functioning piece of absorbent tissue.
And what kind of public toilet doesn’t have seat covers? Not that anyone actually sits on the seats (am I right, ladies?), but still, there should be seat covers readily available. So you’ve gone through all that and you haven’t even gotten round to relieving yourself yet. Once you do, good luck finding the flush. Used to be you pressed a lever down or yanked a chain, now you have to search for hidden buttons or activate a sensor which is only triggered when you perform an interpretive dance routine.
Were you thinking you could just wash your hands after all this? Yeah, good luck with that. How it should work is you press a button on the soap dispenser, lather your hands up, turn the tap on and Bob’s your uncle. But ooohhhh no, now you should wave your hand under something attached to the wall and soap will come out – in what form, soap, mousse, chocolate bubbles, you can never guess. Where does the water come from? You’re not wrong to be confused. You can’t just turn a tap on anymore, that would be too easy. Dance around enough and you might finally trigger the right sensor to get all that crazy mousse off your hands.
After that you might be looking to dry your hands, but regular hand dryers are being replaced by Dyson dryers which are designed to just blast your hands clean off your body.
And while I have an appreciation for mood lighting, excessive mirrors and a selection of perfumes, you will not fool me – I am aware that I am still in a public toilet. Perhaps less time should be spent on which dimmer switch should be installed and more time spent ensuring there’s enough half-ply toilet tissue to keep fatigued toilet users from having a complete meltdown in a stall.
With all this to contend with, I’m surprised people aren’t dropping like flies in the streets with exploding bladders.
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Tags: public bathrooms, silly things
