Sunday, November 30, 2014

Expletive Not Deleted

I try to resist the urge, when washing my hands in a pubic restroom, to let the water automatically shut off when I'm soaping my hands because who knows how long it will take for the water to come back on again? First, I wave my hands around the general vicinity of the faucet while stealing glances at my neighbors to see how in the fuck they got the water to turn on. As graciously as possible, I move from sink to sink until one comes on, seemingly, by magic.

Next, the process is repeated to get the automatic air-injected soap foam dispenser to activate which, for some unknown reason which can only be attributable to the fact that there is no known soap shortage, dispenses, generally, without complication. Except, once in a while, the hole from which the soap foam flows is clogged in some manner which causes the foam to curl upon itself into a soap-coil that dangles from the end of the dispenser rather than plopping into my recently wetted palms. At this point, I am forced to swipe the foam from the foam dispenser, fully negating the purpose of the hands-free design objective.

If I have allowed the water flow to cease, the original process is repeated to get it to turn the fuck back on. Only, this time, it won't stay on long enough for me to rinse my hands. There's rinsing, rubbing, and waving about until my hands are soap free and the front of my pants have a splatter pattern for which I must now construct a plausible explanation.

I should not complain (and yet I invariably do). It could be worse. Every once in a while I must use the facilities where the faucet and soap dispenser are located on the same side of the sink which means the soap and water dispense both simultaneously and freely. That is the point at which I just rub my hands on my jeans and hope for the best.

(Don't even get me started on the towel dispensers.)

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