Enlightenment

The topic of public restrooms seems to resurface here often. I think that's because the public restroom is a basic fact of working life, yet it's such a profoundly flawed experience that its gross inadequacies just fly all in my face. It BOTHERS me that the public restroom experience has pretty much stagnated since 1945. Everybody uses them, yet somehow nobody is paying attention to their design and function. How has technology managed to completely bypass something that everyone utilizes? I just don't get it.

I don't want this to be a journal of my public bathroom experiences. That's not what we here at One Brick Shy are about. That having been said, let me draw your attention to del banyo for une momento.

See this thing here? Look familiar?



What in the H E Double L is the deal with this thing?

Do you have any idea how many times I've had to crawl all the way up into the dark, forbidding recesses of this cavernous monster to fumble my way to the end of the roll? To operate this thing properly you need a socket wrench, a drill motor, and an endoscope. Please, allow me to illustrate:




Hey America - know what I've noticed? You're so damn greedy you've made the damn paper so damn thin that Helen Keller her-damn-self couldn't work her highly-trained, nimble fingers around that roll to find the .001 nanometer-thick change in depth that indicates the end! It's impossible. By the time I get out of there - the floor under the dispenser looks like a family of wombats moved in and spent the last week shredding paper. I've literally used a pocket knife on this contraption and ripped the face off the thing and I still can't make it work right. It's torture.

To recap: we, as a society, can put a man on the moon where he has absolutely no business being, but we can't figure out a way to dispense toilet paper without making me want to KILL MYSELF?

Is this the path to enlightenment?