Today's Germs

Germs. Germs. Germs. Today's germs are brought to you by the letter G (for germ) and A (for airplane).

 

The airplane was crawling with them.  I knew it.  I’ve seen the reports.  I could tell by the looks on the faces of my fellow passengers.  They looked germy. I’m sure I looked germy to them, too.

Miss Brenda and I were just talking about germs. What if you could see them? What if they were different colors? Would it make life better, or worse? I think I could become obsessed with trying to get rid of them. Miss Brenda said “I’d bargain with myself. ‘Oh those germs are only the blue germs.  The really bad germs are red.  I can live with blue germs.’”  Yeah, I would do the same. 

I use the ladies’ room at the far end of the building at my new office.  I use this bathroom not just because it adds extra steps to my 10,000 required steps per day, but also because there is no exit door on the bathroom.

It is actually a locker room with a large bathroom. You enter to the left, turn a quick right, and then turn a quick left. No door needed. No one can see in and no doors to touch on the way out.

The office building where I worked this week was totally automatic.

Automatic sinks.

Automatic flush toilets. (Even if I’m not fond of them.)

Automatic soap dispensers.

Automatic towel dispensers.

Sometimes even high-intensity automatic hand dryers.

But yet, like Walt Kowalski said, ‘Why don’t they use automatic doors? Or even make the doors open out so you don’t have to touch the handle?’

He’s right. I totally agree.  How often have I washed my hands and then used the paper towel to open the door. Always. Sometimes my coat sleeve. 

Then today as I opened the door to exit the bathroom I noticed a small tissue holder and small wastebasket on the wall just by exit door.  The tissues dispensed were small.  Smaller than a tissue for runny noses, but just large enough to use to grab the door handle to open the door and toss in the small wastebasket. 

 

Great idea.  They planned that someone wouldn’t wash their hands and the door handle would be germy. They gave you an additional option to cleanly exit the restroom. (Yet the door back into the office required touching the handle.  Crap.)

For the record, I don’t usually take photographs in bathrooms. Except that now I have taken two photographs in two bathrooms in two days.