take your toilet and flush it

I ain't sitting there no more.

Which brings us to today's classroom lecture: automatic bathrooms.
I've always hated automatic bathrooms.

First, we have the automatic toilet. You sit down, your concentrating ... all of a sudden, whoosh, the toilet arbitrarily decides you are done and flushes. If you're like me, it startles you, you get splashed, you feel hurried. None of which I appreciate in the least. Say you do decide to stick it out and finish what you came for, said automatic toilet may arbitrarily decide to flush for you twice, as if she/he wanted to take it in small, manageable loads. Now, I take that as an insult.

Or, if that doesn't happen, the toilet refuses to flush automatically at all. So you're standing there, searching for the tiny little, use-in-case-of-emergency manual flush button. And since it's an automatic toilet they feel no need to make that button easy to find. Heaven forbid we go with what works and make the flush handle look like the flush handle on the lowly regular toilet seen in your home and mine. We've got to make it this tiny little button in a weird spot on the exposed pipes of an automatic toilet. Typically covered in condensation.

And another thing, what does this say about our society? Are we just so lazy that we can't be bothered to expend the mental power and physical ability needed to push a stupid button to banish our own excrement? Or is it germaphobia? If so, see the end of the above paragraph. If the thing doesn't flush automatically, the whole point is moo. (or moot, for those of you that don't watch and memorize Friends.)

Now we're moving on to the automatic sink. Say you escape the infuriatingly small toilet stall unscathed in the misadventures of automatic toilet antisocial behavior. By the time you reach the sink the odds are you'll cash in there. Maybe it's just me, but I have a 'ell of a time even finding the damned sensor to make the water run. One time I was waving my hands all over like a maniac, trying to get the water to run (at least you know I wash my hands) and finally discovered I had been duped, the toilet was automatic, but the sink was not. Actually had to use a lever on that one.

Then there's the automatic paper towel dispenser. Here's another example of talking with your hands in an infuriating hope that the tiny slip of paper will come forth. It's times like these I wish I knew sign language, perhaps threats would produce results. And don't even get me started with the air thingies. No, air is not a sufficient substitute for a paper towel. I don't care what the automatic bathroom salesmen say.

And now I will get down off my toilet bowl.