OK, so maybe having a blog is just an excuse to occasionally vent about something inane. So be it.
Does anyone besides me wonder just what’s been going on in the public bathroom product market in the last 10 years or so?
Don’t even get me started about all that “touchless” stuff out there, and how our fear of germs caused a techno chain reaction in the industry that has somehow resulted in me waving my hand in front of a black box to get a towel, but never mind. (I remember the day I was in my first completely touchless bathroom: toilet flush, water faucet, soap squirt, towel dispenser. Equal parts puzzling and charming…)
I was in the bathroom at a Wal-Mart the other day (I know, best avoided on many counts). This was the environmental prototype near my old house that Wal-Mart calls HE-1 (for high efficiency). There’s a lot of good improvements in this store, environmentally speaking. But it’s only been open 14 months and the bathroom looks terrible! Doors won’t latch, toilet paper dispensers duct taped together, etc.
But here’s my point: who decided we need those giant rolls of toilet paper? There are so many things wrong with this:
- They’re so low, it’s hard to reach the paper.
- They’re so low, the end of the tissue often drags on the dirty floor before you can get it.
- The paper isn’t perforated, but the tear bar isn’t always at the angle you need to tear it right. Because it’s so low.
- When the dispensers break, they often hang open, and the enormous roll falls off, and sits on the floor. And if you pick it up, it’s unperforated, so just try and tear it.
And those round paper towel dispensers – who decided it was OK for us to wipe our hands on a little rope of paper?
I don’t know what to do about it. I just wish everyone would go back to the old fashioned little rolls of TP. They need to be changed more often, sure, but that means someone’s checking on the bathroom more often, right? Fer cryin out loud, find a system, keep it in good shape and stick to it. It’s getting common to see several different systems in one bathroom – 2 empty soap dispensers that are SO 2 years ago next to the latest model.
As an environmentalist, I should be putting in a plug for hand dryers here. But I don’t like most of those either. If they’re strong enough to do the job, they’re strong enough to remove your nail polish. Lately, if the choice has to be drying my hands with trees or with coal, I choose my shirttail…
Paradoxically, I’m also seriously grateful to live in a country where we have so many (relatively speaking) beautiful bathrooms to choose from and the above is the whine of an admittedly spoiled, privileged person. So, uh, never mind. God bless America.
