The bathroom button........

If there's one thing that the government is great at, it's taking care of people who are disabled that work for the government. There's a lot of people with varying disabilities who work in my area. They all get around and are able to do things very easily. It's certainly good to see those people have the opportunities that they have.

In our bathroom, they have the buttons installed in the bathroom that allow people to push the button to open the door automatically. Really nice feature for those that need it.

Some people in the building use that button as a sanitary crutch of sorts. People have this concept that if they touch the bathroom handle, they will be touching one of the dirtiest surfaces known to mankind. While it's certainly not the cleanest surface, it is general knowledge that public bathrooms with daily cleaning (as we have at my workplace) are actually cleaner than bathrooms in a private home. The reason is that they're cleaned much more often than a home bathroom.

I've seen people do various things to avoid touching the handle. The most common is to wash their hands, dry them with a paper towel, and then push the button holding the paper towel to avoid touching the button or the door handle. Probably is the best way to do it if you do truly fear bathroom cooties.

The second method is to wash their hands, dry them and then just push the button with your bare hands. That would seem to kind of defeat the purpose of pushing the button in my mind. You're touching a surface that has been touched thousands of times by hands and, most likely, is just as dirty as the door handle you're trying not to touch. Not sure how this is any better than just opening the door by grabbing the door handle.

The third, and very rare method is to wash their hands, dry them, and then hit the button with either your elbow or bumping it with your backside. This may be another good way for the person to avoid contact, but how would those people who hit the button with their bare hand feel about someone's backside being used to push that button? I'm not sure I want them to know.

Another thing I've noticed is that several of the people that appear to be germaphobes are actually people who don't practice a lot of personal hygiene. People, if you're going to show a willingness to avoid germs at all costs, the least you could do is to practice good personal hygiene! Without that, it would seem that the battle is lost before it even starts.

Me? I just grab the handle and open the door all by myself. I don't have time to avoid germs and I fear that the time I use the automatic open button will be the one that causes the door-opening motor to go out, thereby keeping any handicapped people from getting into the bathroom. I simply can't have that on my conscience.