I was in an airport bathroom recently, and here’s what I saw: A bunch of grown men, standing in front of a row of sinks, who were flapping their arms, contorting their hands, and waggling their fingers. Beseeching the faucet for water. Beseeching the dispenser for a paper towel. Often they succeeded. But at what cost to their vanity?
And it occurred to me, this scene is wrong. Deeply deeply wrong. How did we convince ourselves that simple bathroom controls needed to be yanked back from, and made inaccessible to, human beings? Somewhere, there is an MBA with a diabolical spreadsheet showing that airports would enjoy a NPV of $735 for switching to infrared faucets. That spreadsheet seemed sensible to the airport procurement officers of America. But nowhere on that spreadsheet, of course, appeared the “Liberty Value” of turning on a faucet for oneself and having water pour out, as scheduled.
We have been denied the simple joy of control over a tool. Why do we have to beg the Light for service? What have we reduced ourselves to? Why have we designed machines that make us beg them for service?
Let’s kill this idea. Resolved: People should be given the right to turn on a faucet. People should be trusted to turn on a faucet. How do we make this idea stick? Help me.
Please, don’t kill the idea of infrared restroom controls.
The infrared faucets and towel dispensers are a hygiene solution, so we don’t need to touch the controls.
The combination of both ideas into the single tool seems like a workable alternative as well. For the some an infrared on/off, for the rest a handle or two. Maybe another idea is a dispenser of that antibacterial stuff on the wall just as you leave, at least for the hygiene concerns.
Personally I think the autoflushing mechanism is a brilliant innovation with very practical application. Maybe its a case of getting carried away with too much of a good thing.
I love the idea of a touchless bathroom. In fact, I once used a reststop on the interstate that was entirely touchless (provided you didn’t need to use a stall). Automatic sliding doors, automatic faucets, dispensers, and flushers. Ingenius. My point is, maybe we don’t need to can the concept of infrared sensors, only improve upon them. Better senors that disperse water more easily and evenly. And better paper-towel mechanisms that can detect whether or not you still want MORE paper-toweling. But, how to make these new ideas stick? Hah.
I still want control over the faucet with my own hand. But your hygiene concerns make sense — maybe we can split the washup area into “Hygienic” and “Non-hygienic” zones. Or maybe the bathrooms could offer up disposable gloves (dispensed by an infrared-powered machine).
How about the idea of two touchless infrared “buttons”: one for start and one for stop. You wave your fingers in front of the start/green button to start the water and wave it in front of the stop/red button to stop the water. Hygiene+control. Or, how about a foot paddle that you press on automatically as you stand in front of the wash basin that keeps the water flowing. Can’t help but brainstorm on this!
You folks are all waaaaay too concerned with hygiene. Too much touchless, antibacterial stuff leads to broken immune systems, incapable of handling the least little assault. Yes, clean water & and functional sewage systems are necessary for a healthy society, but at a certain point (The Tipping Point!?!), when we get OCD about it, the balance toward too much hygiene becomes a detriment. Touch, no-touch, doesn’t much matter. Just make them work.
Mary remarks that, ‘You folks are all waaaaay too concerned with hygiene.”
Mary, read the evidence-based medicine material that’s been done on evaluating germs and hygiene in hospitals. You won’t go into fits of OCD paranoia, but you will re-evaulate just how harmless faucet handles and other seemingly innocuous surfaces can be. Moreover, because of the role of airports (read: massive hubs of potential infectious disease vectors), there’s reason to give them special attention.
Forget cost-savings or individual obsessions about cleanliness; this is a public health issue.
I agree that “[p]eople should be trusted to turn on a faucet,” and I also would like these things to work better. But while it’s cute to frame the issue that way, added to the hygiene issues already mentioned I can live with the NPV argument for conservation reasons — because people often can’t be trusted to turn off a faucet.