See, Skeezix, this is the part of the OP that I’m having trouble concentrating after. I dunno; something about jarbabyj and the words “sticky” and “jelly” is commanding virtually all my attention. Respiration and heartbeat are hanging on by a thread.
[sub]I know, jarbabyj, you said a few months ago that you were trying to get people not to flirt with you. Plus, this is the Pit, so it’s twice as bad. But I can’t help myself.[/sub]
Oh, and those hand dryers truly do suck. [/shameless attempt to distract attention from above flirt]
Personally I try to prevent the storage of food for later use in my facial hair. Though to be fair my beard isn’t all that thick or long and I suppose somebody with a more magnificent growth of facial hair could have trouble.
The trick is to start up the drier before you start washing your hands. Usually, they need to go through one full cycle before they get hot. Hot air is where it’s at.
Hand dryers are not all that hygienic, but they are cheaper to operate than, say, hand towels since you don not have to replace or dispose of the waste, and there is no landry produced.
This cuts labour costs tremendously.
Having worked in a hospital maintaining the damn things (until they went out to contract maintenance[yet they still kept me on so where the hell was the cost saving!]) our infection control teams discovered that they could harbour bugs that cause respiratory infections, the most serious being those implicated in bacteria that can cause pnuemonia illnesses, not good in an environment where people with compromised immune systems are nearby.
Hand dryers are more useful in non-critical areas where the alternative of sterile paper towels is not economically viable, and so they are very likely to be more hygienic than cloth towels, but they are only on equal terms with rotating towels.
I hate hand dryers. The ones I’ve used you may as well blow on your hands for all the good it does.
Now I’m thinking about peer pressure in public lavatories. Everyone just shoves their hands under the tap for a second if there are other people around so they don’t face ridicule for not washing their hands. If I’m still on the loo when someone comes out of a cubicle, I know they’re alone out there when you don’t hear the water running or the dryer going, just them sprinting to the door to avoid being caught. Is this normal? Do I just live in a stinky town?
We have these great dryers here that create a sort of little box that you put your hands in. You put your hands in up to the wrists, triggering the electric eye that starts the dryer shooting out an exxtra-strong stream of warm air on all sides. You slowly draw your hands up out of the box, as the downward-aimed air streams blow all the water down to your finger tips and off into the drain waiting below (kind of like an air squeegie). Fifteen, twenty seconds, and you’re dry!
I love 'em. jarbaby, you think you hate 'em all just because you’ve never had a good one. Like some sort of hand-dryer lesbian. No, really, that analogy is perfectly valid.
I like to use the ass-gaskets myself. A wad of those things does the trick, and unlike TP, they’re strong enough to not fall apart from moisture and stick to your hands.
Was that from a website, or the Bible? “And yea, did the hand-dryer sucketh in the airbourne urine particles, and bloweth them unto thine hands, and the bacteria were fruitful and multiplieth.”
If they have those things at a restaurant, I just grab some napkins at a table and dry my hands with them.
This reminds me of a comic strip I saw years ago (I don’t remember the name of it) when hand dryers were relatively new. It went something along these lines:
Guy reading instructions on hand dryer: 1) Push button, 2) Rub hands under warm air, 3) Wipe hands on pants
I laughed myself sick–because it was and still is the truth!
BTW–I use good ol’ TP instead of those stupid things myself. Sometimes, if I’m in a restaurant, I use the paper napkins when I return to the table. Almost anything is preferable to those so-called dryers!