![\"MotionTowel\"](\"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/MotionTowel.jpg\" "\\"MotionTowel\\"")
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If you’ve been out of your cell recently, I’m guessing that you have.\u00a0 I believe the generic name for this marvel of mechanized paper dispensary is motion-activated hand towel dispenser<\/em>.\u00a0 What an interesting development in the field of bathroom science (my university catalog didn’t list this science as a major…state schools).<\/p>\n But a thought occurred to me recently whilst arguing with one of these wall-mounted boxes of paper pulp.\u00a0 Where did they come from?\u00a0 Now, I know they’re comprised of plastic and metal bits — I’m not looking for a stork-based answer here.\u00a0 But did you notice how quickly these things appeared almost everywhere?\u00a0 It was fast I tell you, FAST!\u00a0 One day public facilities were being served by decades-old classic models and the next we needed technical training to dry our hands.<\/p>\n Some classic models required the user to grasp a piece of the next sheet and pull, often resulting in useless \u00a0torn sheets and great piles of paper on your toes.\u00a0 Other models were equipped with some sort of handle or lever that needed to be depressed or cranked to make more paper available.\u00a0 I’m happy to voice dissatisfaction over a variety of things that don’t meet with my approval, but I honestly never had an issue with the old dispensers.\u00a0 Granted, sometimes I was forced to use the jacket of the guy ahead of me to dry my hands, but that was rare.<\/p>\n I suspect these rampant changes have something to do with the swine flu.\u00a0 Or perhaps fear of some other worldwide calamity such as an outbreak of common sense or large incidents of parents controlling their children.\u00a0 I will say that almost any workable device is better than those porcelain-clad gizmos that blow air, stirring up myriad bacteria, odors and dislodged toe-jamb from the floors of public facilities.\u00a0 These motion-activated models easily beat the blow-and-hope method.<\/p>\n But I wonder about the net effect here.\u00a0 Let’s say you’re Clyde and you own Clyde’s Croissants And Bird Baths.\u00a0 You’re a small business person, struggling to break even in a very tough economy.\u00a0 One has to imagine that you, Clyde, have several things you’d like to do with a little extra coin in your pocket.\u00a0 So let’s imagine for a moment that your cousin Reginald who runs the local donut shop takes a week of vacation to visit the Wisconsin Dells.\u00a0 What is the local constabulary to do without their daily dose of donuts?\u00a0 Of course they turn to you, maker of flaky and buttery goodness.\u00a0 This causes you to dramatically increase your Cop Croissant Capacity, or C.C.C.\u00a0 This in turn increases your profit for the month.\u00a0 Next thing you know you’re sitting there with a cup of hot bean water and wondering what to do with the additional $500.<\/p>\n New carpet?\u00a0 A new sign?\u00a0 Some fresh advertising in the local newspaper?\u00a0 A radio spot?\u00a0 A new cash register?\u00a0 A bonus for the pimple-faced punks mixing dough in the back room?\u00a0 A new mixer?\u00a0 More chairs?\u00a0 No…you, Clyde, buy a couple of motion-activated hand towel dispensers!!!!<\/p>\n Now you have not only spent money on the devices, you need to hire someone to remove the old ones and install the new ones (you’re far too busy and inept to attempt this on your own).\u00a0 And now you must buy batteries to power the units.\u00a0 Multiplied by the tens of thousands of units sold and, well, let’s just say that I think there’s a big bunny with a drum at work here.\u00a0 And we all know landfills are starving for more batteries, so that’s a good thing, too.<\/p>\n And paper.\u00a0 You didn’t think about that, did you, Clyde!\u00a0 No, you didn’t.\u00a0 You had a swelling supply of paper for the old machines.\u00a0 These new ones use a special kind of paper, a special size, on a special spindle.\u00a0 \u00a0And they don’t absorb worth crap — Saran Wrap would work just as well.\u00a0 You’re going to have to stock up on this new paper.\u00a0 And I’m sure you’ll find something really useful to do with the old paper, like staunching those shaving nicks on your chin.<\/p>\n So all in all, this is a pretty involved and expensive proposition.<\/p>\n But why?\u00a0 I don’t think even Oprah, on her best day, could get this level of national compliance (sorry Steadman, don’t hurt me).\u00a0 And this change came about during the Bush #2 administration…and since nobody was listening, I doubt he had anything to do with it.\u00a0 I keep coming back to fear of disease…perhaps the makers of these devices employ the best sales professionals on this orb — weazels who are able to instill great levels of ridiculous fear.\u00a0 They were able to somehow get all these people to replace stuff that didn’t need replacing.<\/p>\n When I think of a public bathroom I see a room swimming with bacteria, germs and plague.\u00a0 All kinds of nasties spread by other creatures live on the door handles into and out of the bathroom and stalls, on the flushing levers, on the water faucets.\u00a0 I’d be willing to bet that the push-levers on those old dispensers were the CLEANEST part of a public bathroom because, IN THEORY, they only got touched by hands AFTER some minimal effort at washing.<\/p>\n So I’m totally dubious that these boxes are helping to prevent the spread of germs nor have they saved the life of the next great humanitarian.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0And I’ve come very close to destroying numerous models for not giving me the next sheet fast enough, or turning out too dainty a piece of paper or being totally empty.\u00a0\u00a0 And that whirring noise…I don’t need that right after I’ve done some serious thinking, I just don’t.<\/p>\n I think their ubiquitous presence is evidence of a great marketing and sales job that is perhaps one of the biggest, yet most silent, successes in the business world since the invention of the hedge fund.\u00a0 I’d like to get some of this sales mojo in MY business.\u00a0 \u00a0What a waste of…everything.<\/p>\n Now, an automatic Purel dispenser…THAT would be revolutionary!<\/p>\n If you’ve been out of your cell recently, I’m guessing that you have.\u00a0 I believe the generic name for this marvel of mechanized paper dispensary is motion-activated hand towel dispenser.\u00a0 What an interesting development in the field of bathroom science (my university catalog didn’t list this science as a major…state schools). But a thought occurred […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1152,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions\/1152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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