does anyone else find it a little disgusting that we zip, buckle, and re-tuck our clothes before we wash our hands? our hands are dirty enough that we need to wash them, and yet before had we’re touching our clothes and belts etc. i imagine that a belt buckle would habor a decent population of bacteria, especially since no one washes their belts.
most public restrooms have approximately the same number of sinks as toilet stalls (some less some more), i think it makes sense to put the sink inside the stall right next to the toilet.
There was a movie theater around here that had that kind of set-up. Every stall had a toilet and a sink. I think it was an attempt to speed up the lines, but I’m not sure it worked.
Yeah, I find it a little disgusting. It’s the main reason I don’t like using public bathrooms.
So I should wash my hands and then pull up my pants? :eek:
I wash my hands and then put a bit of soap on a towel and wipe the germs off my zipper and belt. Then I wash the faucet with soap and wipe down the souls of my shoes. I then go back into the stall and wipe my behind with a new paper towel with new soap, and wipe down any part of my clothing that touched any part of the bathroom with yet another fresh soap towel. Next, I repeat the first part of the hand-washing. Then when I leave the bathroom, I use a towel to open the door. Then I exhale from holding my breath the entire time I was in the bathroom. 
Don’t even get started on what happens if I have to use a public drinking fountain!
Oh, just stop with the germ scare. There are germs in the world…deal with it. You are not, I repeat, NOT going to die from not washing your hands before pulling up your pants after going to the bathroom. And the odds you’ll even get the wee bit sick from it are astronomically low. Did you know that, chances are, there is more fecal mater and choloform bacteria on your dishes and sink then on your toilet? Germs are good. The weaker germs help our immune system learn to fight off bigger germs. If this current antibacterial trend continues, then in 100 years the slightest cold virus will kill someone. Yeesh.
- me :dubious: , imagining NoPretentiousCodename doing the trouder shuffle from the urinal to the sinks -
This does bother me a little bit. It’s paranoid, but when I’m at home I wash my hands before I deal with my pants.
In public there’s not a whole lot that can be done about it.
Honestly, the most disgusting thing we’re doing, IMO, is to wipe ourselves with paper rather than washing ourselves with water, as it’s done in many non-western countries.
My cat and my dog both clean themselves by licking themselves and then follow up on it a short while later by licking my face. I have a cousin who babysits toddlers and gets in rather intimate contact with their hands and clothing which in turn has more familiarity with their fecal material than yours probably does.
Get some perspective.
Kleenex now has tissues with antibacterial stuff right inside each one! Just wrap your hands in them when you wake up and keep changing them every 45 minutes. That way 99% of any germs you touch will die immediately! Also, for best protection, take off all your clothes and stay in bed all day watching old movies. Never cut your hair or fingernails.
AMEN!
I’m eating health today–raw veggies and lowfat dip. Do you know how difficult it will be to get those tiny pieces of chewed cauliflower out of those tiny spaces on my keyboard from when I spewed my food after reading this?
But that will…leave…only the…really tough ones…
I do pretty much what George Carlin does.
Clorox has a couple of new commercials that exploit germ paranoia with the dangers of body soil! One has a guy leaping into his bed only to freeze in midair as his “clean” sheets turn into a bubbling cesspool. The other shows a main donning a white t-shirt which is invaded by crawling squiggly bits of body soil. Cripes, it looks like the X-files movie. Apparently the only way to combat this scourge is to blast every bit of your laundry with sodium hypochlorite and add more chlorine to the environment. I believe in being clean. I even use bleach on my whites. Our sheets and my underwear are not whites and I don’t lose sleep over not bleaching them.
George Carlin has a extended bit about obsessive cleanliness in Napalm and Silly Putty*. I like his line about wearing the same thing to the Oscars every year, filthy underwear. He likes to be comfortable while watching TV.
I usually circumvent this problem by letting my johnson dangle from my zipper at all times.
No muss, no fuss. And I fit in pretty well at the bus station these days.
Overheard in a men’s public washroom:
“Hey, didn’t your mother teach you to wash your hands after you take a piss?”
“No, she taught me not to piss on my hands.”
He did this bit when I saw him a few years ago. Afterwards, I used the bathroom, and when I came out, washed my hands at the sink. Everyone else washing hands had just seen the same show. I was tempted to ask, “shit on yours, too?” but you just never know what’s going to offend people.
I’ve thought about this, but it doesn’t seem to me that germs would live long and happy lives on our belt buckles and purse straps.
clairobscur: If the folks using water don’t use any tissue, then how do they…you know, get everything off? And dried?