One of the positives from the covid pandemic is a lot of bathroom doors can be opened with your foot now.
Also the return of paper towels for hand drying.
I hate those stupid air dryers. Most of them barely do any better than just shaking your hands in the air, because they’re simply spraying your clean hands with all of the shit and piss particles that are floating in the air.
Would rather have some cheap paper towels so I can dry my hands, and use the towel to open the door before throwing it in the trash.
Additionally, my understanding is that a lot of the cleaning done by washing your hands is mechanical, and using a paper towel with a slightly rough and absorbent surface scrapes off all the stuff that has been loosened by washing with soap and water.
Outside of antibacterial or germicidal soaps, the cleaning action of washing with soap is 100% mechanical. Soap molecules are asymmetrical and have one side that’s hydrophilic and one side that’s hydrophobic which, when used with water, creates a nifty mechanism that picks up crap on one side and catches a ride on the water molecules with the other side.
Isn’t basic soap also destroying the lipidic membrane of most bacteria? It doesn’t need to be specific antibacterial soap for that.
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Most of them barely do any better than just shaking your hands in the air,
I saw one of these once where someone scratched “4. wipe hands on pants” on the instruction panel.
The trick is to shake dry in the sink, then rub the moisture up past your wrists onto your forearms, creating a thin layer. Then use the dryer, repeating the rubbing motion spreading the moisture out until it’s gone.
because they’re simply spraying your clean hands with all of the shit and piss particles that are floating in the air.
This is the real problem. Apparently, the Dyson air blades are the worst: https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/dyson-dryers-hurl-60x-more-viruses-most-at-kid-face-height-than-other-dryers/
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The only dryers I like are the Dyson ones the air blade ones.
They’re pretty bad. Putting your hands down in a hole and spraying water all over isn’t real sanitary. I’ve seen some that are really dirty inside!
The new generation doesn’t use this bad design anymore. The Dyson Airblade V is just a box with two sharp edges that blows the water right onto your pants and the Airblade Wash+Dry works in a similiar way with a little bit sleeker design. Both of them have hepa filters too, so from a hygienic standpoint they are much better than their old airblades and the clones that filled the market.
They’re nice, but I’ve never seen anyone use them properly. Then again I rarely see people wash their hands properly either…
You’re a supposed to move your hands out slowly and the air blade wipes the water away.
I am well aware. No one else is.
They are efficient, but way too loud.
Every air dryer that doesn’t suck is extremely loud
The heated ones are decent if someone preheated it for you.
I have never had the luxury of using a heated air dryer
At my work there was a trash can just under the water fountain between the two doors of the bathroom. perfect design.
I haven’t ever seen a door like that, except in hospitals. I wish they’d become more popular in my area
Those foot pull hooks are useful, but I have yet to figure out how to get out the door without an awkward shuffle step or downright stumble as I pull the door open.
Open the door with your foot, hold it with your elbow.
Not everyone is able to not skip leg day.
.
Seriously though, one of my biggest pet peeves is when they get every other aspect of touch-less design correct, and then fail with the door.
#designfails
Or when the soap dispenser is touchless but not the tap.
That’s solved with getting extra soap, scrubbing the tap, rinsing the tap with water when you rinse your hands.
The door thing is still the biggest
The best design is no door. You walk in and around a corner / wall… Think airport.
Touchless booth door but then its occupancy detector is faulty ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡ °)
Don’t think you need it that much. You’re going to wash your hands after. There’s a small chance you could contract something before using the bathroom from it, unsure on the likelihood of that transmission.
My understanding (which may be false) is that this can come about from competing design considerations and regulations. Like… It’s ideal to be able to push the door open from the inside of the bathroom so you don’t have to touch a nasty doorhandle, but you also don’t want somebody to be able to put something in front of the door, potentially trapping you in the bathroom (particularly in the event of a fire… Dying in a fire is probably worse than touching a nasty doorhandle), and you also don’t want doors to unexpectedly swing open into busy hallways. This drives me nuts too, though.
Eh, there’s an easy solution that a lot of places are starting to use. A foot pull. Probably costs $5-10. No real excuse for any place not installing these.
I mean hell yes I’m for this. Just the obvious solution of “make it push” might not work.
How about a door that swings both way
Potentially an issue of smacking people in a busy hallway.
A handle you can hook your arm around would solve this.
Given that it has a blow dryer instead of paper towels I doubt the door handle is an issue
Easy. Just lick the door handle 3 ~ 4 times to clean it so that you don’t need to get your hands dirty.
That’s how I do it and I’ve only had Covid 5 times! Works like a charm.
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It depends, if he has had it once per year he’s caught up to Covid-2024
Gotta collect them all
Yup! You also sometimes get free nutrients on the door handle ☺️
I see you also have a toddler.
Why don’t more doors have foot pedals? I saw them in a mcdonalds and now I’m wondering why t f they aren’t everywhere
I’m seeing them More and more. They aren’t expensive either.
I just grab the handle using my butt cheeks.
The sensors aren’t there for your convenience to turn them on, they are there to save the business money by turning them off.
It can be both.
Mechanical/timer versions with auto-shut-off of all of these exist, but you have to touch those.
I don’t like those mechanical/timer ones. Especially the ones with a push button top, always felt like I had to smack the button several times just to get twenty seconds of water.
Yeah, businesses hate it when you leave the soap on.
Portion control.
Those dyson.airblade urinals are typically so messy that they defeat the purpose of touch less.
Please stop peeing on those. They are not actually urinals.
But… they’re too high to poop in… 🤔
You need to build up pressure
thats why you bring a friend for co-op mode.
Listen, superchief. If I piss in it it’s a urinal.
There’s piss in you, so aren’t you really the urinal?
Nobody put it there, though. It’s incident to being a meatbag. So I guess people can be urinals but aren’t necessarily urinals.
Hand driers that use air increase “germs” on your skin. Paper towels reduce them.
If there are no paper towels I use toilet paper. Last time I used a public restroom I dried my hands on my pants.
There is a lot of fear-mongering and misinformation about paper towels vs air dryers. Paper towels are marginally more hygienic because air dryers spray the particles off your hand into the air. Neither are a good option if you don’t wash your hands well to begin with.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/25/hand-dryers-paper-towels-hygiene-dyson-airblade
I dont know if this has been definitively proven as last I heard the studies that reflected this were paid for by paper manufacturers.
They tested this on Mythbusters and found air dryers to be unsanitary.
They are unsanitary and don’t actually dry your hands, but they save the company money, so they’re what we get.
The big-paper-towel psyop
Can also use the paper towel to open the door on your way out.
Easy, just open it with your teeth, then your hands will stay clean.
There are add on “foot handles” that sort this out, but they are pretty uncommon.
Yeah, I just ran ino this for the first time a few days ago by coincidence. I guess it works and makes sense. A little awkward and won’t work for everyone, but maybe the best solution
My favourite is the kind of S curve that some places have, so you just walk in, but it’s private enough that people can’t just leer from the hallway or whatever I’m not actually sure what we’re accomplishing with doors here unless it’s a very tight space I guess like if the bathroom is near the area where patrons eat at a resto? Yeah I get that, door away. Sorry for rambling.
I worked in an office that had the S curve bathroom and I do not recommend it. People who sat on that side of the floor got to hear the air dryer every time someone used the bathroom. Also, the smells… Automatic door openers are the answer.
I went to college the S curves, as well as one office briefly before the pandemic, but they were both off the “main drag” by a bit. Like along a hallway that didn’t have people just sitting nearby.
As is eternally the case, location matters
I grab it with the edge of my shirt. While it’s not ideal, my shirt will be washed later and it spares me having to deal with risk of fecal particles on my hands where they can immediately reach my face.
It’s strange that automatic doors are standard on the outside of just about every shop, but nobody has ever thought to put them indoors.
Because it’s an extra expense, not just to install but to maintain. They put them on the exterior door because it lets people in faster and easier (more customers) and is easier to haul out your purchases when you leave so you are encouraged to buy things without thinking as much about logistics. Bathroom doors being automated vs manual is almost never going to affect sales.
Spit on it and pull. Spit kills everything, right?
Geez, I hope not.
We’d run out of pornstars!
Oi vey
The correct way to handle this would be to use a disposable paper product. Most places still have a paper towel dispenser along side the air hand dryer, you’re supposed to use that.
Besides the point, most people don’t know how to properly wash and dry their hands. There’s a technique to both that actually improves cleanliness a lot and reduces overall waste.
I never use air based hand dryers. Paper towel for life. Some places use maze patterns instead of doors, which I generally like but usually requires some extra work with air handling to make sure the bathroom air stays in the bathroom, and a bit more floor space to provide the room for the maze pattern. Those restrooms are usually the ones without paper towel, I don’t mind, I just have moist hands for a few minutes afterwards.
All of this can be googled. So I won’t go into more detail, but the majority of people couldn’t possibly give fewer fucks about handwashing or hand drying properly. So I expect most won’t even try to learn how to do things better, ever. They just go with whatever their parents taught them as a child and never question it again. Bluntly, your parents probably did the same, so you’re probably working off of 50+ year old advice on hand washing.
Yes, yes and yes. Do you also do laboratory work? Ive always found these hygiene important but, now i notice how nasty all things get since ive started doing lab work and especially when working with diseases
