Lavish production fails to impress
When I entrust my dripping digits into the care of a public lavatory hot air hand dryer, I want it to do more than emit a regretful sigh over them, as if to say: “Well what exactly do you expect me to do about these?’’
I’m not talking about the mere production of noise. To judge from the racket some of them make, you’d expect a fairly forceful blast of air, rather than a huff that then requires users to test the absorbent qualities of whatever they happen to be wearing.
And yet, for a while there, the very sight of a hot air dryer would send me smiling in recollection of the meme that showed one sporting the sign: “Press button for a short speech from Donald Trump.” But then (and I really do suspect it was this way around) I saw versions that replaced him with Greta Thunberg, which for me sucked the humour right out of things.
I have long held concerns about the shortcomings of the modern public lavatory experience, although it’s pleasing to note that those loopy revolving hand towel contraptions are becoming less common.
You know the problem there. You’d try to yank the roll downwards. It wouldn’t budge. Knowing this full well, you’d still give it a second yank, out of frustration. Then you’d resort to dabbing your hands on the last manky, damp remnant of cloth that was still accessible. After which it was usually, once again, a case of pants to the rescue.
I have no great issue with paper towels, provided they haven’t run out, though the nice new dunnies in the Invercargill Central precinct stand testament that you can have a row of receptacles, each positioned mere centimetres below its handbasin, and the miss rate would still somehow be worse than the Breakers on their worst day.
Meanwhile, within the privacy of the cubicle, there’s the toilet tissue issue. The inherent meanness of single-ply paper might be less problematic for the user if it simply entailed removing twice the length we would otherwise use.
Chance would be a fine thing. Either you have big covered vertical wheel, more puzzle than anything else, because you so often have to insert a finger into the housing to rotate it time and again from below, in search of the break in the apparently seamless surface ...
Or you have one of those dispensers with a tiny aperture that ekes out the tissue like string. You then face the slow, tedious process of flattening the stuff out, if you aspire more than a painstaking flossing technique.
All in all, there’s a lot to be said for waiting until you get home.