… when people, almost always the giggly girly girl type, decide they’re too DELICATE to touch the dirty dirty door handle of a public bathroom and tear themselves a piece of paper towel… open the door with it… and just let it fall to the floor as they leave. Hey girl! Do you think you will get cancer if you touch that door? AIDS even? I bet you also put down a ring of toilet paper before hovering over the seat anyway as a preventative measure against AIDS, but like hell if I care, at least that paper gets flushed. Sure, public toilets aren’t the cleanest of places, sure, and if you rubbed your hands vigorously on the floor and licked them you would probably get diarrhoea but can you please just pick up that paper and throw it away and open the door like a normal human being instead of the germ-fearing pansy you are? I mean, it would be a real tragedy if you were killed in the next global pandemic due to your underdeveloped immune system, wouldn’t it?
I hate it when people do not understand data and how it is manipulated.
They’ll present me with their products table and ask me for an extract detailing last year’s sales for some nebulous category of items that is not properly defined anywhere - like ‘tall items’ or some such.
And despite careful quizzing over exactly what columns they require, they’ll always come back later and ask for a couple more - except they don’t want a new extract, they want the columns added to the spreadsheet they have imported it into, and they deleted that pesky product code column, because they don’t need it, so there’s no way for me to reliably relate it back to the source data.
Then they’ll perform endless manipulation of the results; splitting it into three dozen separate worksheets, all with different column structures, and hand it back to me, asking if I can update the live system with their data; items that need the description changed are coloured blue and items where the price is to be changed are coloured red.
Actually, FlyingRamenMonster, that little towel-on-the-door-handle dodge is one of the recommended ways of avoiding the flu. The last step, though, is throwing the towel in the trash. You’ve just washed your hands, so why would you want to grab something that 50 people have grabbed before you, and re-contaminate your freshly washed hand?
I’ve been a restroom janitor. The toilets, sinks, and floor were cleaned daily, but the door handle was cleaned every two weeks. It may be the dirtiest thing in the room, and everybody grabs it.
I usually grab an extra paper towel to open public restroom door handles with. Rather than letting it drop to the floor (WHO does that?? I’ve never seen it!), I throw it away in the nearest trash.
giggle
girly twirl
What LunaV said!
I usually wait for a big strong lad like the OP who doesn’t even bother to wash his hands, to swing the door wide open, (nearly tearing it off it’s hinges with his bare hands) and walk out behind him unsullied by the germs that are just waiting to assault me by leaping off the door handle.
Thanks brawny and fearless bathroom door man!
I pretty much stopped catching colds when I started doing this (without the annoying throw it on the floor feature). It’s pretty much the standard operating procedure where I work…
GT
One, she’s a chick. Two, she didn’t say she doesn’t wash her hands. And three, dude, wtf? Why are the rest of us expected to pretend that wacky nutjob behavior is perfectly normal and acceptable? Open the door with paper towel if you feel the need (though, like I said, I’m not going to pretend that there’s not something wrong with you if you do) but, as the OP said, throw out the goddamn paper towel afterwards instead of tossing it on the floor.
So, are we ranting about the paper towel to open the door thing, or the paper towel on the floor? I agree that nothing needs to get thrown on a floor anywhere. I also agree that I have stopped getting colds since I became more scrupulous about what I touched (don’t forget about other door handles and stair and escalator hand rails, too!) and washing my hands with soap multiple times each day. And I’m about the least girly girl around.
My immune system is fresh and healthy from not having to deal with fighting off cold and flu viruses 24/7. It would be a real tragedy if all you bare doorknob grabbers died first in the next pandemic because someone coughed on their hand and grabbed the handle, then you grabbed it then rubbed your eye. What a way to go.
I never open bathroom doors with my bare hands anymore. I don’t use a paper towel, though. Usually I stuff my hand up my sleeve and open it that way because I rarely use paper towels after I wash my hands.
Yes, it’s understandable to be aggravated at people who throw paper towels on the floor, but honestly? I’ve never seen that. If it were the case, you’d think there’d be a drift of paper towels outside the women’s room, and it just ain’t so. If other people don’t want to touch the nasty door handle, what’s it to ya? Since I started being careful about this, I haven’t had a single cold. Coincidence? Maybe, but it’s an easy precaution to take; a hell of a lot easier than having the flu, anyway.
Somehow, I think my own health is more important to me that protecting the genome from future germs. I’ll throw my dirty towels in a basket if it’s near the door. When it’s not, blame the establishment, not me!
I think it’s more bizarre NOT to use a paper towel to open the door. There’s no way in hell I’m going to touch a nasty door handle that hundreds of other people have had their filthy hands all over. Many people don’t even bother to wash their hands after they come out of the stall, and from the mess a lot of them leave around the toilet I’m not willing to take the chance. Even if the towel isn’t protecting me that much at least I’m better off than directly touching the door.
Ditto. I mean, if you’re going to touch the door handle, why not just lift up the toilet seat and run your hands along the rim? (Actually, that may be cleaner than the door handle, as it’s cleaned more often.)
Or there’s always the time-tested (as in, over millennia) tradition of exposing yourself to as many germs as possible through the door handle and other people’s hands and well, everything, so you can build up your immune system instead of living in a bubble. I have never used toilet paper to open a bathroom door and would look askance at anyone who did and I haven’t had the flu since I was eight! So obviously, you’re all just stroking your tiger-repelling stones.
Unless you’re all just whooshing me. Please say that is the case.
There’s an automatic door opener in almost every store, but does someone install one on one of the most needed areas in a store? No. I also wish the door greeters handing out carts would wipe the handles with a sanitizer wipe. It has to be one of the best places for spreading colds and flues. The sticky kid mess handles are gross too.
To clarify: yup, there we go, that’s the kind of person I’m complaining about.
When did we get so, um, anal about all this? Personal cleanliness is important, certainly but calls for anti-bacterial wipes to be handed out are surely a little OTT? And I’ve read stuff on the internet (not necessarily true, of course) of women flushing the toilet with their feet and opening the lavatory door in the same manner in order to avoid touching anywhere another human being might have touched.
It borders on germophobia in my opinion.
Nope, not whooshing you at all. I just did an extensive search, and I couldn’t find any backup for the idea that hand-washing and avoiding pathogens weakens your immune system. Just the opposite, in fact - most sources recommend hand-washing and avoiding pathogens to keep you (and your immune system) healthy.
I think there’s a happy middle ground here - OCD-like hand-washing isn’t likely to benefit anybody, but never washing your hands and spreading and picking up an inordinate amount of pathogens isn’t going to benefit you, either.
One thing you non-paper-towel using door handle grabbers should be aware of, however, is just how dirty your fellow humans are. Maybe you have the Incredible Hulk of immune systems, and you manage to fight off every pathogen you encounter, but don’t kid yourself that those door handles aren’t filthy. They are.
This is so true, but you know what’s even filthier? Money!
That’s right, they don’t call it filthy lucre for nothing.
So, in the spirit of community service, I’ll take all that disgusting cash off your hands (so to speak). Just send it to me at <address removed by hard-won sense of humor limit filters>
I wash my hands after handling money, too, if I can. 