I just don’t understand how our civilizations are thousands of years old and yet some things in our lives that are so obviously inescapable have so many flaws and opportunity for improvement. Slightly awkward and amusing but quite relevant is the topic of public restrooms. I am not a freak about cleanliness so I do use them but most of them are just so gross that even Shrek is no match for. Here are a few solutions I would love to see:
- How many generations does it take us to understand that men are sensitive about their attributes and even though you put urinals, half of men are always going to prefer to pee on the seating toilet just to get more privacy. The result of people urinating on the seat and people trying to take a shit on the same seat looks about like that:
So instead, you couple one toilet with one urinal (you can see that empty space that we actually have) and you never get that pic again. Btw, that counts for a house with many boys like mine, because its much more easy to pee at a urinal than to aim at the toilet at 6.30 am…
- Oh yeah, don’t you love those transparent toilet papers that rip rather than unroll when you pull them? How can you wipe anything with it anyway? I have to fold it in 2^4. Same for paper towels at drying procedure.
- Flushing systems are just not right. Those handles (seen on pic above) that seem to need to be pulled to flush the toilets are just not having me. People pee on their hands and then what is the first thing they go for? Yeah, the flusher. Or the exit door (assuming that people that pee on their hands are the ones that don’t care washing them. If you can’t pay for sensors then please take a look at Italians’ way: they use pedals! How much more sense does it make?
- Please do not try to convince me that I have to touch anything so that I can wash my hands. Especially the idiotic push-buttons that are one for hot and one for cold water and you actually have to keep them press constantly so that water runs, consequently of which you just can’t possibly wash yourself qualitatively because hands never meet. Oh, and yeah the left one always gets burned while the right one gets cooled to freezing. I’ve seen people try to use their elbows its hilarious, believe me! Anyway. Sensors pls. Or even just regular handles would do fine. I promise, I will not waste a lot of water!
[UPDATE: A friend of mine hinted that if you press strong enough you can get those push buttons stuck down so you can actually wash your hands. Which is exactly the opposite of saving water, since I do see them ‘broken’ all the time…]
- Blowdryers. Rarely dry completely and still most of them have to be pressed. Dyson so far is the only one that got it right! Or paper towels are fine. Just no crappy dryers that make me sweat more than they dry hands.
- Doors! What is the point of going through 15mins drying procedure when I still have to touch that door that is touched by every guy that wiped his ass and didn’t go through the drying procedure (or for that matter washing procedure). Hmm how about at least make doors pushable rather than pullable? How much does that take?
- We can’t change the mindset of a country but my school had a campaign by putting a paper above the toilets, “If you sprinkle when you tinkle, please take the time to wipe it off.” I did take time to do so when it was previously clear [only in that case]. It worked overally but as the papers got tore off, they didn’t get replaced. Cheap solution that works, because if previous person was created incentive to be clean (all of the above points) and leaves the place clean, it is much more likely for you to also clean up your stuff. Usually, generally, probably… but not always of course.
- Another problem girls seem to have – none of them actually sit on the toilet. From numerous discussions about it, it turns out lot of them just squat as low as they can without actually sitting on the toilet which is extremely difficult (I have tried it and I have failed). Still thinking about this one…
As you can see, most of those take a little thinking rather than money, and as a matter of fact they probably save money because of cutting spending on cleaners paychecks.
So if your about to build a facility with public restrooms, get in touch with me – I will consult for free.
(let me know if you have other suggestions)