Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Automation in the Bathroom

During my recent trip to/from Arizona, I happened to use the restroom at O'Hare Airport.   A true sign of the times: 

1.  The toilets flush themselves - and whenever they want, no matter what you may still be doing.
2.  The water at the sink comes on when you wave your hand in front of it, just in case you never learned how to use that metal pushy lever thing.  You know, you pull up on it and it magically makes the water come out of that long silver tube. What's that called? 
3.  While you are still trying to figure out how to use the automated water system, the soap comes squirting out about 1/4 cup, most of which lands in the sink because you didn't know it was going to do that so you didn't have your hand there to catch any but the last teaspoon, which is all you really need anyway.

So, after all this automation, hand washing and singing Happy Birthday to make sure I scrubbed my hands long enough (and by the way, every time I hear that song now, all I think of is the bathroom),  I turned and walked over to the paper towel dispensers. 

At the dispenser to my right was a tiny elderly Asian woman furiously waving her hand in front of the dispenser.  She couldn't get hers to work.  She looked at the side, she looked underneath, she waved and waved and waved some more.  

I looked at mine.  I pulled the lever down twice and out popped the paper towel.  She looked at me.  She looked at my dispenser.  She looked at her dispenser.  And just started laughing.  She looked so embarassed.  I just winked and shrugged.   Well, I can't really blame her.  The bathroom was so automated you don't have to do anything for yourself except sing Happy Birthday.  Having to regress back to manual paper towel dispensers threw us all off track. 

Thank you O'Hare Airport for a laugh on a really long day.  Had you completed your automation, I wouldn't have anything to post right now.

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