(no subject)

[telophase]

So. Is there something inherent about the act of drying your hands with a paper towel that requires you to stand directly in front of the paper-towel dispenser while doing so, even when there is someone else standing nearby with dripping hands, waiting for a paper towel?

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I believe there must be.

I also believe that the same inherent tendency drives one to look directly at the person with drippong hands, and then pretend you didn't.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Gosh, you've had the same encounter. I can tell. :D

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I've had it numerous times.

I'me particularly fond of the part where, once they're near the door and your hands are busy, they give you an apologetic glance.

[labyrinths.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I think it's up there with one of those things like how my neighbors spent the summer building a nice, smooth concrete drive-way only to park their car on the lawn. :\

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Well, they spent all that money on such a nice driveway; why would they want to ruin it by parking a car on it? XD

[labyrinths.livejournal.com]

Geeze, I should've thought of that.

And maybe the person at the paper towel dispensor was silently encouraging you to save trees by air-drying your hands?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

That must have been it! A guerrilla environmentalist silently encouraging people to use fewer paper products!

[labyrinths.livejournal.com]

By Blossom, we've solved it! Who would've thought that all those rude people standing in front of paper towel dispensers whilst others stand nearby with dripping hands were really hippies with a secret agenda to prevent the deforestation of rainforests?

[the-z.livejournal.com]

Better to know the person who touches the door on the way out before you has washed their hands.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Luckily the door on the closest restroom opens out, so I can shoulder it open without touching it. XD

[the-z.livejournal.com]

That is lucky! I've gotten into the habit these days of saving the paper towel I just used to dry to open the swing-in doors of bathrooms. People look at me weird, but I've watched others leave a bathroom without even giving the sink a second glance. Ugh!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

My insane cow-orker from my previous job was insane about the bathroom, too. She wouldn't take food into it. Now, naturally, I can see not taking, say, an apple I just bought at the snack bar upstairs into the bathroom or something like that, but she wouldn't take food into the bathroom that was:

1. sealed inside a plastic bag, which was...

2. wrapped inside a paper bag, which was...

3. zipped inside her backpack, because...

4. it was dirty!!!!

That is the line between merely overly cautious and OMG U INSANE WOMAN.

[the-z.livejournal.com]

I'm far too amused by the typo 'cow-orker'

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Not a typo, deliberate. :) (I think it may have originated over on alt.sysadmin.recovery lo these many years ago, but I can't take "co-worker" seriously anymore. XD)

[the-z.livejournal.com]

Then, that is the best, intentional mis-spelling since 'teh'!

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I think it was part of alt.folklore.urban (http://tafkac.org/afu/guides/afu_language.html) jargon before it spread to the Scary Devil Monastery, but I never quite followed either place religiously enough to want to swear to it.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I discovered both those places plus alt.religion.kibology* at the same time, so I never quite remember which things come from which. I think they had a pretty big overlap in participants, too.


* I have a Kibo Number of 1!

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

PLEASE tell me you hung out in alt.fan.warlord as well! Damn kids these days look at me like I'm senile when I crack up over * <--- PERTH.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Sorry! a.f.u, a.r.k, and a.s.r were my primary hangouts (lurking only in a.s.r - I still lurk there XD).

[madame-manga.livejournal.com]

Why are many of these ultra-fastidious types also the sort who will make disgusted faces at a mother nursing her infant in a restaurant or mall and say, "Why doesn't she do that in the BATHROOM?"

I never had to deploy any of the responses I'd stockpiled against that comment -- luckily for the complainers! I would never change a kid's diaper on a restaurant table (though I've seen it done, oh my God) so by the same token, I wouldn't feed him his dinner in the toilet. Food and poop don't mix! And I'm not even all that squeamish about the poop, having changed a hell of a lot of diapers. :P

Offended

[bookofnuggan.livejournal.com]

THIS thoughtless, selfish behavior is an ABOMINATION UNTO NUGGAN.

Re: Offended

[chomiji]

But then, so are cats and the color blue, so ... .

XD

Re: Offended

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Praise Nuggan!

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

My guess is absence of mind.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

You are a much nicer person than I am. :D

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Um, no, but alas, it's just the cement-headed kind of thing I'm doing when my body is on total autopilot, my brain a couple universes away, and people (mderstandably) get medieval on me for being clueless.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

Is the only wastebasket one of those built into the paper towel dispenser? I hate those.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yup.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

That's the answer to your question then. They stand there until they're ready to throw the paper towel away.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

And yet it never seems to occur to this sort of person that if they merely step back a foot or two and allow someone else the chance to get a paper towel, they could easily throw it away when they're finished - it's not so small that you can't toss a wad of towel into it, even when someone is standing in such a way as to block the handle.

I'm tempted to, at these time, just idly start shaking my hands, sprinkling water all over them, while waiting.

[mothoc.livejournal.com]

this question falls along the same lines as, "When you pee in a urinal or toilet, do you spit into it as well?" During a multi-day road trip while in choir, this came up. The verdict was that nearly all the men on the trip did (only one or two exceptions), and a couple of the women did. We did not inquire further on that point.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

For the same reason that, even though there are ten people behind them in line, customers frequently remain standing directly at my register after the transaction is complete, conspicuously fish their receipts out of their bag, slowly remove their wallet from their pocket or purse (for the second time), and carefully file the receipt alphebetically amongst the others. If they should sidle two feet to the left to allow another customer to begin a transaction, they would immediately be stricken with a profound amnesia that would leave them unable to remember where they had been, or what they had been doing, and when it came time to reconcile their finances, they would never be able to remember to look for the receipt in any place so obscure as the bag containing the purchase.

Because everybody thinks they're the fucking king of the universe, that's why.