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This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
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Author
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Topic: Restroom Prank
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Ky Boyd
Hey I'm #23
Posts: 314
From: Santa Rosa, CA, USA
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 05-12-2007 08:07 PM
So this afternoon I walked into my theatre's men's room and noticed a slightly vinegary smell. Definitely not urine, but something else. Some obnoxious little s**t had put two ketchup packets under one of the toilet seats. There was ketchup splattered everywhere. On the floor, on the walls of the stall, on the door of the stall, and most likely on some yet to be identified customers pants. Maybe this one has been around for a while, but I'd never seen it before. Fortunately, it wasn't that hard to clean up. Just some Windex and a few paper towels, but I gloved up anyway. On the one hand, at least it wasn't graffiti or physical damage to the restroom. But it was still obnoxious.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 05-13-2007 11:04 AM
They're not as common as they used to be, but we still have those towel cabinets over here.
There seems to be something hanging down behind the one in your photo through which the used towel passes on its way back into the cabinet; could that be to somehow prevent something that happened here many years ago? I was still at school at the time, and all of the cabinets at my school, and I think at all the schools in London were moved to a lower position on the wall. The reason for this was that a child at a primary school elsewhere in the Country had stood on something, put his head through the loop of towel, jumped off and spun around, with fatal results.
There are other problems with these things; the towel runs out, leaving the tail end of it to get used repeatedly, and it thus gets soaking wet. the towel never seems to take up at the same rate as it feeds out, so the loop either gets too short to use, or so long that it falls on the floor. The supply of clean towels sometimes runs out, so that the old one has to be turned round and used again. Then, of course, there are the rental and laundry costs; you can't exactly wash these things yourself in the sink!
Compare this with paper towels which generate lots of waste and mess, and also run out, and hot air dryers which draw a lot of power, and never seem to be very reliable.
Any inventors here who can come up with a better hand drying system? It's something that's certainly needed.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 05-13-2007 11:51 AM
quote: Randy Stankey
Properly maintained, they are better than paper. No cleanup. No trash cans and they get your hands drier than paper.
I think I agree; towel to take off most of the water and a hand dryer to finish off works quite well.
quote: Randy Stankey
The loop will stay the same size if you thread them right. We ALL know how to thread things correctly... RIGHT?
I would say that the vast majority do not keep a constant loop size; whether this is due to poor design, poor maintenance abuse by users or something else, I cannot say; I'm not an expert on them.
quote:
If the loop is maintained at the correct length, there will be no danger of strangling. And, if you check your restrooms for cleanliness often, there's no problem with them running out and getting all messy.
Heck! If my Dad could teach a ten year old kid to take care of a restroom, I don't think it would be too hard for any other employee!
How things should be, and how they are, are often two very different things. The ones that were in my school were pretty old, probably early '50s.
As far as I know the fatal accident only ever happened once, but that was enough for the education authority at the time, the ILEA, to mount all towel cabintes so low that most users had to bend down to use them.
In the real world, I still see significant problems with all hand-drying methods.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 05-13-2007 06:06 PM
quote: Frank Angel
Wow....I don't want to sound insensitive, but what did this kid have, some kind of suicide wish? Or perhaps this was just natural selection weeding out really stupid genes. So the next thing the authorities do is scramble to lower ALL the hand towel dispensers down near the floor all over the country so that everyone has to bend down to dry their hands? Seems like that natural selection thing wasn't able to weed out enough of the stupid genes that had evidently worked their way into the staff at the regulatory department.
It's a long time ago now, probably around 1971-2, but the fatal accident was real, I remember reading about it in the news, so it must have made the national press as it didn't happen locally. As far as I can remember, very soon after it happened the ILEA (Inner London Education Authority), which no longer exists, issued instructions to their schoolkeepers and cleaners that the loop of towel had to be under a certain maximum length, i.e. too short to get a head through, and very difficult to dry hands on as it was almost touching the bottom of the cabinet, and that any cabinet which failed to keep this length was to be taken out of use. This was a temporary measure until the cabinets could be lowered to such a height that the feet of a school-age child would be on the floor if they did manage to put their head through the loop. Some school buildings changed in use over the years, e.g. from a secondary school to an infants one, and nobody tended to bother about mounting the things a a suitable height for the users; people tended not to consider the needs of children when these things were installed, in much the same way that few people considered the needs of wheelchair users until quite recent times. They tended to be mounted at typical adult height, and it was quite common for younger children to have to stand on something to reach the towel. It certainly happened in my school, which was unusual in being all-age from 6-18. This may be how the accident happened; I don't know.
I've never heard of any similar accident, and the chances of it happening again are probably very small indeed, but it was proven to be possible, and with such serious consequences I doubt that the Authority really had any option but to do something about it. Looking at it from the point of view of the parents of the unfortunate child it is understandable. Putting a loop of towel around your neck while standing on something like a chair may not be very sensible, but five and six year olds sometimes do things that aren't very sensible. So do much older people.
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