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.
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/
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
The best design is no door. You walk in and around a corner / wall.. Think airport.
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.
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.
Don't those blowers spread way more germs than just using a paper towel?
And you can open the door with a paper towel too. Also, paper is one of our most renewable resources, and most recyclable.
The sensors aren't there for your convenience to turn them on, they are there to save the business money by turning them off.
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.
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
Sometimes a trash bin is located near the door, so I'll use the same paper towel I used to dry my hands to open the door, hold the door open with my foot, then throw the paper towel in the bin. But these make hygiene so much easier:
The Step n' Pull should be standard.
A hobby of mine is to get annoyed at hand dryers. 80% of the models I find are eyerollingly useless. Blow a faint breeze for five seconds, stop and refuse to trigger again no matter how much you try to slap the air in front of it.
Then there are those 5% that actually gets it. Blowing a jet stream that makes the water droplets sublimate so fast you forget you even washed.
Need those foot handles to kick the door open. God bless establishments that have installed them.
Otherwise, I roll my sleave over my hand and pull the door open. Especially in restaurants.
I don't like the sleeve method. Grime just hangs out on your sleeves and then gets deep in the fibers. No thank you. I use my pinky and ring fingers when I absolutely have to.
The step n pull was actually a shark tank product
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.
When they have paper towels, what I do is take the last one with which I dried my hands to grab or pinch the door handle and pull.
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.
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.
Yeah, this drives me crazy. Best thing I can do if I have a jacket or long sleeved shirt on, is to put my hand inside the sleeve and open it that way
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.
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