Maybe you can help me figure something out here. I have noticed that many people will exit a public bathroom by taking a clean paper towel and using it to cover the door handle, discarding it on the way out. Some bathrooms will place trash cans close to the door to accommodate this behavior. In some people the drive to do this is so strong that if there is no trash can within 2-point range, they will do it anyway and just drop it on the floor
I understand this, especially in public places like malls or theaters where who-knows-who-with-what-disease has been there. No qualms at all. But.
Why don’t these same people have fear of touching other things outside the bathroom? Someone will use the paper-towel bathroom exit, then head right for the kitchen and not think twice about pouring a cup of coffee, opening the fridge, punching the buttons on the snack machine, holding the railing going down the stairs, opening the supply cabinet door. . . . All of these things were touched by the same people with the same germs that they were worried about on the way out of the bathroom.
So why does fear of germs dissipate once you leave the loo?
Maybe people do have these fears. Howard Hughes, for example.
However, for more rational people, how many paper towels do you want to have to carry around with you? Most people figure that stuff doesn’t live long enough to infect you if it’s left out on a refrigerator door handle or a set of car keys. The door right there in the bathroom, however, is constantly getting showered with e coli.
[George Carlin]
You know how often I wash my hands? When I shit on them! You know how often that happens? Tops… tops! Two, three times a week.
[/GC]
Our immune systems need germs to practice on!
I’ve never heard of anyone doing this outside of total germophobes. It’s certainly not common enough for most workplaces or stores to put a garbage can by the door just to accommodate it (unless you live and work in the ob-com village on Alpha III M2–bonus points if you get that reference). The garbage cans in my workplace bathroom are way on the other side of the room.
But yeah, a lot of our rules about cleaning are arbitrary. Theoretically, if you don’t get anything on you when you go to the bathroom, you shouldn’t have to wash your hands, since all you’ve touched is the clean toilet paper and the latch on the stall (which, if everyone went to the bathroom perfectly, should also be clean, and someone who craps on themself when they go to the bathroom isn’t going to be clean during other times so the latch shouldn’t be any dirtier than the coffee maker, etc). Yet most of us do it anyway, and would be sketched out by someone who doesn’t. It really doesn’t make a lot of sense.
I think it is not so much a fear of germs as it is a fear of grossness. I have watched women come out of stalls and leave without washing their hands, and that is disgusting. I don’t want to touch the door because I just saw her touch that without washing her hands. I’m not afraid I am going to develop the black plague from it or anything, I just think it is gross, and since I just went through the trouble of washing my hands I don’t want to touch the door handle much the way I don’t want to stick my hands in a mud puddle after washing them. I feel that a little exposure to germs is healthy. I hardly ever get sick, and my friend who carries that hand sanitizer stuff with her everywhere she goes and cleans her house with bleach every day gets sick all the time. I think it is because she is so rarely exposed to germs that when one does find her it shuts her system down for days.