I had a doctor’s appointment at the hospital the other day. When I was in the ladies’ room, I washed my hands and then stood in front of the paper towel dispenser. It was one that registers your hand movement in front of it and is supposed to give you paper in return. I waved, and I waved, and I waved. Finally, I asked it please. It worked! The woman that stepped up next to me laughed. I didn’t stick around to see if she had to say please. Do you think there are people watching from somewhere?
Then later, while I was on Facebook someone commented on this very thing and started a comment free for all. I enjoyed the banter so much that I wanted to share it. I left out the names for their privacy. The following only proves that Facebook may be the only therapy some of us need.
This is the comment that started it all:
I never feel like a bigger jackass than I do when I’m trying to find the automatic sensor button on a faucet or paper towel dispenser, waving my hands all around like I’m attempting to heal it.
And these were the responses!
I love when I walk up to an automatic door and it doesn’t open and I feel like if I wave my body around wildly it will open.
They NEVER work for me. I go around with wet hands. I guess that is why you have a shirt.
It’s like you are trying to talk it in to working. “Hello, Hello! Would you please dry my hands NOW!”
It’s worse when you have to also trigger it for a height challenged 3 year old.
Ah but true healing only comes when you lay hands on it grasshopper. Smack it hard it will give up a bit of soap or towel then!!
Do you do the “faucet shuffle”? Start at one end and end up at the other, trying to find a faucet that will turn on for you?
My son screams like he is being murdered when the hand dryers comes on, so I will never come out of a bathroom with dry eyes or hands!
i get freaked out on the super sensitive ones that will go off if there is a breeze, like the air conditioner kicking on and it kicks out paper towels like no tomorrow. and i get mad at the ones that will give ME 2 inches of paper, but a child 13 FEET of paper towel. what the hell is THAT ABOUT??!!?!?!?! and nothing is more irritating than the ones that have that little dial wheel on them, that looks like an auto sensor thing…..but really has that little dial wheel that is spring loaded, wet, cruddy, and you are going to have to crank out your paper towels, re-wash your hands now that you have God only knows what kind of hand nasty on you from who knows who schmeared all over you…..while the paper towels are tucked under your armpit, and then, you get a big wetspot on your boob when you grab your paper towels with wet hands. looks like you’re lactating.
I just returned from Las Vegas where no two towel dispensers worked the same way. I found myself waving at what I thought was a sensor button on what turned out to be a manual towel dispenser. I was annoyed everytime I left a bathroom.
How about those Dyson hand dryers in airport bathrooms? Full-on crazy, as if you’re drying your hands with a vaccuum!
The other day I left the sink on and couldn’t figure out where the running water sound was coming from………..
sometimes I wave around for about ten minutes, then realize that it’s one of the old fashioned hand crank ones, or just plain out of paper
nothing in vegas has consistency, and as a vegas resident, i apologize for our asshattery. those super blowers make me mad…..they just exxagerate the fat assedness that i am, showing the way that my body slides around on my bones as it blows me to Kansas. it’s an embarassment and whoever created that shite should consider themselves a monumental failure to mankind. there are blowdryers, and then there is just BLOW ME!
lmfao! or going up to one thats Not a sensor one and trying to figure out how to make it work!
I feel like a bigger jackass than that when I wave my hands all around, every which way upside and down, and it turns out the sink or towel is NOT automatic.
I have worked at an airport for the past 23 years. Try waking up in the middle of the night, going to pee and trying to get your home faucet to work by auto sensor! That’s signals a need for a vacation
Or you even walk up to the faucet and it blasts water and soaks you
dont u hate when u do that and then finally realize there is a button? DUH
I am surprised no one has mentioned the other bit of buffoonery taking place in public restrooms. Auto-flush sensors that activate whilst you are still conducting business. GO!
In college, my friends and I referred to the automatic hand dryer as a Dry Hands on Pants. I still do.
The auto-flush practically undid the potty training efforts when my daughter was learning. I had to hold my hand over the sensor while helping her on the toilet with the other. To make matters worse, the suction on those things look like it can suck down a horse, so I had to help her wipe and pull her pants up with one hand so this little 2yo isn’t terrified of the toilet. Just my luck a times, the sensor doesn’t even work. Throw us in a tiny cubicle and follow it with some sink and towel adventures and that would be a bad day.
Picture.. I’m at the movies, in bathroom, trying to get the stupid dryer to work. A little girl walks by and says “You have to put your hands all the way under the dryer” Once again I fail at technology !
Oh GOOD! I’m not the only one that flails around in front of faucets and towel dispensers in public restrooms
I must have special powers because I once got the auto papertowel thingie to shoot out the towels by waving my boobs in front of it. But don’t be too impressed because I have also almost cried looking for a toilet handle where there wasn’t one, and almost started a new life in the bathroom stall so nobody else would see what came out of me.
oh, don’t get me started on the unwanted enema/slash/butt hickie from the negative pressure that those auto flushes can create. those things can give you hemmorrhoids just from the vacuum pressure. it makes me wonder if you can end up with a true disease from a toilet when those things will suck skin off even the leathery-est ass in town.
and yes, i can get specific, graphic even. i try to be a good girl though….i’m afraid of evil big facebook brother kicking me off here, although i’ve said things on here that have made old school firefighters and marines cringe……so i wonder….just who ARE these big facebook brothers that monitor our mouths/hands.
While in the hospital, I got a room with an automatic towel dispenser. It shot out paper towels every time I brushed my teeth or put eyes drops in. It was right beside the mirror and the sink! I ended up cursing at it and a nurse heard me and told me to say a few nasty words to it for her too.
you will never feel like more of an idiot than you will when you try to remove a pen cap that doesn’t come off……rather it’s just made to twist to open the pen, and twist to close, and you pull the cap til you break it, and you go through 4 OF THEM!!!!!!! shooting the spring within it in your eye twice before you realize that it’s a twist activated pen. i am just that retarded.
I stood in front of one the other day and asked please! It gave me paper!
“It’s especially bad when the paper towel dispenser isn’t actually automatic and you just assumed it was and you have to figure out how to do the stupid thing the old fashioned way and by that time your hands are dry and you don’t need the paper towel any longer.”
I wish I could figure out how to share this on my page!
right click, drag to copy my text…….right click the highlighted part, click copy, and then take it to your page and right click on your enter box and click on paste.
just keep waving your hands over the computer and say ‘copy’.
Right? You’re like ” I am not electronically challenged! I can work this stuff! It must be defective!” Wtf..
The Chicago airport has 2 types of sensor activated toilet seat covers. You wave at the button and the fresh plastic wrap slides around the seat. Am I a total Oregon redneck hick for thinking “Wowie! I like this!”?
Yes, cuz in Oregon, you’d have to figure out how to recycle it!
I’ve left public bathrooms where nothing has recognized me: not the automatic toilet or the automatic faucet. Sometimes I think technology is trying to tell me that I don’t have a soul.
i have yet to do the automatic toilet seat cover. i want to try those
you guys are gonna make my low self esteem rise to something almost normal here with liking my comments. i should have gotten facebook a long time ago instead of therapy. and i should have more friends like laurie if this is all it takes. i’d write too if i knew how to…..i’m afraid of rejection though. well, let me rephrase that. it’s not the rejection that i’m afraid of. it’s the mate i’ll end up with in jail after i take my hostilities out on the various people who deny me my propers when i submit my materials and they tell me i suck moldy carpet through someone ELSE’S nose. i wish i could say i’m a lover, not a fighter, but, well….i just happen to be one of those who gets butt hurt, and then makes sure that everyone has a hurt butt. if i have to suffer, we all have to suffer.
it was so much easier during my drunk and clumsy days. i have stories that can rival l’s. though my purse was never run over.
Facebook is great therapy! Blogging is the second best. You can just write whatever you want.
I saw the plastic seat thing in New York – dumb Southerner thought what great hospitality! I assumed it automatically changed with the flush! Duh! I sat where someone else put their butt! I read the sign AFTER. I almost wanted to go again just to have a clean seat.
And, the beat goes on…
How do you follow that? I have no clue. However, as always, there is a dog story. Hubby was gone for the day and I decided the dogs could take over the garage for a while. They laze around and sleep as though they’ve been working in the fields all day long doing hard labor. I checked on them periodically and they were sacked out, looking about as innocent as a newborn babe in a cradle. Then, I heard this awful tearing noise. My first reaction (and usually the one I should stick with) was Calypso is doing something she ought not to be doing.
I flipped on the garage light (it was overcast and getting darker by the moment) and looked for her. Ryka was being her usual perfect self, but Calypso was nowhere in sight. How do you lose a dog in a one-room garage? Listening to where the sound was still coming from, I spotted her between the rocker back slats, gnawing on Hubby’s piano bench. I was mortified (more scared for my hide than hers.) That sweet, precious, ever-loving mutt (pure breed) had chewed a chunk of the corner off the bench. There is NO way to hide the damage. Thinking quickly (trying to save my life and hers) I turned the bench around, loaded it up with stuff, and threw them out of the garage (the good suffer for the bad.) If I had let Ryka stay inside and put Calypso outside, she would get into even more trouble. Ryka is a good babysitter most of the time.
This afternoon I opened up the front door and spotted Christmas decorations in the front yard. I have no clue where she found them. Nothing is safe from that rat. Tomorrow, first thing in the morning, I am calling Pet Smart to get the name of a training school. She and I have a date with discipline in the very near future.
As if Calypso doesn’t find enough things in the barn to drag around the yard, the neighbors are up to their old tricks. The garbage is back against the fence. I used to think these people were semi-intelligent, but now I’ve changed my mind. They put the garbage against the fence. Hubby stations the rolling wall to protect the dogs from pulling rotten food through the fence. The sanitation workers pick up the garbage and neighbors move the can back to their house. Then, they position it at a different place along the fence line. Instead of buying a second garbage can, the garbage is once again thrown against the fence. Hubby moves the wall into position. This situation repeats itself each garbage day.
If it’s payback for being best friends with his brother’s ex-wife, it’s not working. It’s a lose/lose game. They put the trash against the fence; my dog pulls it through, chews it up, gets sick, I throw the trash back over the fence, and tend to a sick puppy. The rolling wall is back in force. I could care less that their yard looks like a pig yard, I have to protect my puppy, who at this point in her early months, does not know not to eat spoiled food. Welcome to life in Crazyville, USA.