You shouldn’t be touching any handles upon exiting a bathroom.
The door should be push to exit, so you can open it by pushing with your elbow.
I prefer airport style bathroom entry and exits … there is no door, just a walkway that gives privacy to the entry so that you can’t see inside from the hallway.
Takes up more space though
So’s your mom lol
Alri
That would be ideal. I’ve also seen a few with weirdly discrete foot pedals. I like that idea, although the ones I’ve encountered haven’t exactly nailed the design.
I just use a paper towel to grab the handle (if there’s no foot pedal). What’s annoying is when there’s no trash can near the door to toss the paper towel while exiting.
Out of idle curiosity about your username, I’d like to ask.
Dune, cryptography, or both?
I’m a Dune fan and work in security, so I’d say both!
My place of work installed those foot pedals around COVID time, and they work just fine.
I’ve also seen the ones that have the pull handle, plus the little piece that extends upwards so you can use your forearm to pull the door open.
Haven’t seen that.
You can also push a door open with a foot as you take a step forward.
It’s trickier than using an elbow, as it involves the balancing act of putting your weight on the door, which will give way, before allowing your foot to actually land. Do it wrong or with a door that’s much lighter than you thought, and you fall over as you deliberately shift your weight off the one foot you’re still standing on :D
I initially started doing it to push open doors while holding stuff with my hands, but now I kinda just walk into doors and open them with a foot as I do.
We’re talking of pulling doors open. Unless I misread, I believe you’re describing a method of pushing a door outwards.
I am.
How would a pedal that opens a door towards you work? Unless it’s like a handle for your foot?
Yeah it kind of is… The ones on the bathroom doors at my work place are a little metal plate at the bottom of the door with a grip on it, and a kind of… lip? I don’t know how else to describe it. You can probably find photos if you’re that interested.
But yeah, you kind of have to pause for a split second and brace, then you use your foot on the grip to pull the door open. After one or two times, it’s second nature now.
That might not be up to fire standards demanding doors in the hallway to be opened to the inside of the room.
Is that a thing?
Feels like something door closers make irrelevant.
You’d think fire code would require exit always be push, because that makes evacuating smoother.
If you have a bunch of people wanting to go through a door, you do not want them the be pull.
Even while orderly, requiring a crowd to step back to provide the space for the doors to open is not ideal.
I imagine it’s because bathrooms have no point of egress, so the ability to block the bathroom door from the outside (intentionally or not) needs to be avoided at all costs for safety reasons.
Makes sense.
yay critical thinking!
Assuming the bathroom is in a hallway, having the door open into the hallway would cause the flight path to be narrowed which would be against (some) fire code(s).
After all, significantly more people would want to flee through the hallway than out of a room adjacent to the hallway.
If they opened outward, they’d block egress in the hallway, which would have equal or more traffick than any single room connected and will enough people in the hallway, you wouldn’t be able to open the door to escape at all.
For small spaces with limited occupancy, you can get away with opening into the room. Main exits are push, unless it opens onto a public sidewalk and not a stoop or something.
I’m pretty sure there’s regulations against that, so you’re not pushing a door into a random passer by as you’re exiting the bathroom.
The foot hook handle thing is my preferred method.
I’m fond of the paper method. Paper barrier to protect me from the gross handle.
Or foot
I think the door opening into a main area is not ideal. Like a restaurant with somebody carrying food having to swerve a bathroom door that opened unexpectedly.
I would bet good money that both door handles are equally filthy, by nature of it being a school. Kids are walking talking germ incubators. We all are, but kids especially. And that’s before we even get to the kids who are intentionally malicious little bastards – I guarantee you, in some school districts, with some kids, signs like these would just be asking for an aspiring Poo-casso to smear their shit on the door handles.
The bottom one might be dirtier, with kids specifically wanting to “soil” it because that is “so funny”. And the group that does wash their hands don’t want to touch “the dirty one”.
I’d put good money on your take.
I would argue that the bottom would be dirtier, not because of kids reflex to be contrarian, but because human nature pushes people to prioritize themselves even at the cost of society. They may not wash THEIR hands, but they are not going to touch other dirty peoples handle.
Plus the bottom handle looks to be about the same height as my butt cheeks. If I can grab it between the cheeks instead of getting my hands dirty then I’m definitely doing that.
(No, not really, I’m not that talented)
So that’s why I saw that door with two separately labeled butt plugs on it instead of handles
Poo-casso
This got me.
Here’s an idea:
The sinks should be outside the bathroom.
That way, you can wash your hands after touching the dirty door, and everyone in the hallway can see if you don’t wash your hands.Are the doors even necessary? Just put a sharp left turn tiny hallway for privacy, blocks out everything but sound - most public bathrooms have them already
blocks out everything but sound
You’ve never heard the sounds my coworker makes on the toilet.
The smell tho.
Plus school bathrooms tend to be dirty.
More airflow via the open entrance could help with the smell
It could.
But then I’d rather have my highschool toilets which had a direct outside access. They weren’t heated and thus were cold in winter but the smell was indeed ok.
The sound is the worst part, I wish the bathroom in my office had music or something so I don’t have to hear every detail of whomever is disemboweling themselves in the next stall over.
They should play fake fart noises
I still don’t want to touch a handle where it’s guaranteed that people who just took a shit without washing their hands have touched, even if I’m about to wash my hands right after.
We should just all use those foot handles. Solves pretty much everything, but why are they so rare?
Cause they trap disabled people inside the bathroom.
Which can happen to some anyway if they don’t have a powered door opener.
OK but just because you put a foot handle on a door doesn’t mean you can’t have a normal handle as well. Just put them both on the door.
Or am I missing something?
That…makes sense to me. Not only would you need one set of sinks, you wouldn’t need to go into the shit and piss room if you just want to wash your hands.
If they’re going to break the rule about washing hands they’re not going to follow the door handle one either.
I’ll just lick both handles to be safe
⬆️ Found patient zero, everyone.
That’s me actually after I have Sprucey lick my eyeball
I recall there was a story from Predictably Irrational where the experimenters were trying to figure out how to get participants to avoid double-dipping tortilla chips.
Along with a control condition, they tried setting up a sign that said “NO DOUBLE DIPPING”, and I think they also tried paying people or getting them to promise not to double dip, stuff like that.
The thing they found most successful was to set up two bowls of dip: One labeled “For double-dipping”, and one “Not for double-dipping”.
They supposed that once they had to do a physical action where they sorted themselves according to “what kind of person they are”, they wanted all of their visible actions to be consistent with that.
Interesting experiment but who the fuck doesn’t just eat the whole chip at once?
Did he stutter?
“Restaurant style” chips are enormous. Far too big to shove in your mouth at once.
sounds like you might benefit from having a bigger mouth
Double dippers, apparently.
I like a big salsa to chip ratio, so I break the chip into smaller pieces (usually 2) and dip/scoop each one. No double dip, good salsa to chip ratio.
Side note, I believe the mythbusters did double dipping, and as I recall, it’s really not a problem unless you stir or leave the chip in the dip/salsa for an extended period.
It’s been a long time but I recall a study featured on Freakonomics where a national park tried different signs to get people to not steal rocks. Signs like, “Taking rocks hurts the ecosystem” and “Taking rocks is a crime.”
The only effective one was something along the lines of, “A million people visit this park every year and leave things alone.” Suggesting that telling people to do the right thing is less effective than peer pressure.
On the one hand, it’s depressing because people seem to care more about fitting in than being rational.
But on the other hand, it’s reassuring that we’re so eager to solve things collaboratively that we’re willing to set aside our own personal opinions.
Our relentless obsession with social connection will either be the thing that kills us or the thing that saves us. And I honestly have NO idea which.
I still wouldn’t trust either handle. People are assholes.
There are some folk who I went to school with I can see rubbing their assholes on the handles because “fuck you, you’re a sign not a cop”. I’m sure there’s a name for that disorder.
Oppositional Defiance Disorder, I have a coworker like this. It’s exhausting.
“Don’t you dare do anything I say”
He is also too intelligent for reverse psychology. I just ignore him if I can.
Literally scrolling while pooping at work and someone came in, did their thing and left without hand washing. These idiots walk among us.
I see it happen all too often. People suck.
there should be a guy in every bathroom who body slams you into the pavement if you don’t wash your hands for 20 seconds with
warmsoap and waterPer the CDC
Use your preferred water temperature – cold or warm – to wash your hands. Warm and cold water remove the same number of germs from your hands. The water helps create soap lather that removes germs from your skin when you wash your hands. Water itself does not usually kill germs; to kill germs, water would need to be hot enough to scald your hands.
this whole time i had no idea… thank you. i’ll update the suggestion in light of this new information
BOOOOOOOO! DOUBLE-DOWN! DOUBLE-DOWN! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!
This problem is solved by having paper towels (air dryers suck) and placing the paper towel trash bin next to the door so that you can use your hand-full of towels as a barrier between the handle and throw the towels away as you leave.
Or motorized door, or no door at all, this clearly isn’t a house, just have an S shaped passage. Voila, way fewer sick people on your building. It quickly pays for itself. And without reminding everyone on every day of how gross humans are.
it seems like a good idea to me, but my question is would it lead to more poop particles circulating more widely throughout the building than without a door? ig airports, etc seem fine with it so it must not be a big problem?
No, and when you see those petri dish tests, that’s not poop in the air. There are million of living things in the air around you already. Spores and bacterias and that’s what is growing in the petridish. It is already everywhere and mostly beneficial. But it does make for good clickbait.
also a foot handle
Me: grabs both handles
Schrodinger’s washed hands
I don’t believe there is good in human nature, so I’m going to remain grossed out by both handles.
Embrace the evil, double-dip both handles
Double-dick both handles?
They should put 110V through the top one.
Someone who’s too fuckin lazy to wash their hands isn’t gonna take the time to read anything in public.
Like a JRPG, the choice is an illusion.
The real answer is to use a paper towel to open the door.
Since 2020 I haven’t touched a door handle in public. Because that’s when I realized just how backward some people are (I’d managed to avoid learning that prior). I wrap my sweatshirt around my hand to open them, now. In the summer I have paper towels in my pocket.
first off, the clean handle should be on top. the nasty handle shouldn’t drip onto the clean handle.
second, as you are leaving a public bathroom, reach under your shirt/jacket (hopefully something untucked. ) use the fabric as a barrier for your hand and grab the handle with the front of the shirt/jacket.
If you are lucky enough to have a paper towel dispenser, dry your hands with one, use it to open the door, then prop it open with a foot while you throw away the paper towel
But now you have dry urine smeared over your sleeves.
Better than on my hands, but…
i didnt say sleeves. the underside of the bottom of your shirt. or go to a haberdashery and get yourself a hanky.
Ok. Your first one is “tomatoes, tomatos.” The second is my go-to solution of sorts as well: use a paper towel, open the door, and dump the paper towel in the nearest bin. This works more often than not.
I just open it with my feet. I helps with keeping by thighs flexible too.
I almost exclusively flush with my feet in public bathrooms
What is there to drip? Y’all pissing all over your hands or something?
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Paper towel, always. No paper towels? That’s why you enter the bathroom with a napkin in your pocket.
I use paper towel and also use hand sanitizer to make sure no germs get through. I fucking hate public bathrooms.
