American standard urinals could learn some things from their peers in France. There are some urinals in France which are as tall as the ones we’re accustomed to but which continue down to the floor. Not only this, but individual urinals are not defined because an entire wall in the restroom is covered with the glossy ceramic and thus acts as the super urinal which defeats all competitors. This design has at least 2 advantages over the traditional american standard, but in order to avoid being accused of toilet humor, I won’t go into detail about them.

On a related topic, I hope everyone can agree that hand washing is a worthwhile activity. However, a great many shit/piss rooms are equipped with technologically insufficient hand sinks, soap dispensers, and drying devices. The japanese are far ahead of the rest of the world in these departments, not to mention in technology in general. What we need are motion detector devices in all shit/piss rooms. Here’s why: when you wash your hands in a shit/piss room, you are presumably doing so because you’ve committed an insanitary task and want to minimize risk of illness. Well then, when you operate devices of the old system (i.e. twist turn faucet/push tab liquid soap dispenser/ etc.) the initial touch of the faucet knobs is with dirty hands. After you’ve pressed out sufficient soap cum, and after you’ve finished washing your hands under the hot water and before having turned the flow of water off, this is the time when you’re hands are the most clean, though admittedly they are still in need of a drying and you are expected to stop the water running. These last two tasks are where the problems lay. We’ve agreed your hands were dirty when they initially turned on the water, so we can say the faucet knobs are still dirty. Now, with your clean hands you spin the dirty knobs to cut off water flow. Not so clean anymore, eh? But it gets worse: most times you have one or both of the following two options for drying: paper roll dispenser or air-dry. Both of these methods normally require you to touch the devices in some manner, with your newly dirty hands no less. And assuming everyone else who dries their hands has washed them in the manner described above, you can assume that when they dry their hands they are touching these devices with their newly dirty hands, making the drying devices (things you might unsuspectingly assume to be some of the cleanest things in a shit/piss room) to in fact be some of the dirtiest. Motion detector devices would solve everything. There would be no touching whatsoever. Motion detector doors are necessary too, just to be consistent.

I can tell I’m not the only one unhappy with the current situation. There’s a shit/piss room on my campus with the paint on the inside of the door clearly absent where people have used their feet to open it, because they obviously don’t want to push the door open with their hands (even though their hands are unfortunately already dirty for reasons already explained). On the brighter side, it’s lucky this room has outward opening swing doors at all. In the worst scenarios there’s a handle or *gulp* knob which much be pulled/turned in order to open inward. If you’re as concerned as I am, you’re aware there are two options in the inward opening door situation: wrap your fingers around the bottom of your shirt to protect them from the handle/knob, or, better, wait for someone from the outside to come in, and slip out before the door closes the escape route. I know there are some shit/piss rooms that are partially automated, and that’s encouraging to see. with any luck, the old systems will soon be entirely scrapped and will only be a distant memory, a topic suitable for comic conversations at pubs.