Infection protection and bacteria hysteria
7th September, 2007
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It takes some practice but if you persevere, you can eventually learn to open a toilet door with your hand wrapped in the sleeve of your jacket. It's not a skill that comes easily and must be practised at home for weeks before you are able to effectively use it on the door of a public toilet, but learn it you must if you are to survive.
There was once a phantom paper wrapper at my workplace whose practice it was to leave the inside door handle of the men's toilets covered in paper. I am familiar with the paper-on-the-seat procedure popular with a large percentage of the female population, millions of hectares of trees being felled every year to provide paper that is laid, layer upon layer, on toilet seats to protect the user from "germs". Men don't do it. I confess I have no way of knowing this and am not in the habit of peering over the doors of cubicles to see whether people do or don't, but I remain confident it is an aberration confined to the female population. The phantom door wrapper, however, was a male and obviously fearful of contracting disease from fellow workers who had touched the door handle before him. While he was never unmasked, he ceased his activities after several anonymous, hand-scrawled notes threatened to upend him in the urinal if he was ever caught in the act. It took the recent 'flu epidemic (human, not equine) to remind me of this. Ever eager to embrace a new obsession, I became convinced by the hysteria surrounding the epidemic that if I kept my hands clean, I would not get sick. I can't recall who first recommended the practice but I found myself washing my hands frantically at every opportunity. I didn't just wash them - I lathered and rubbed and scrubbed them until the skin began to pucker and wrinkle. I had the cleanest hands in Queensland. I even began to turn off the taps with my elbows, like a surgeon scrubbing up in ER. Then I would approach the towel dispenser with my hands held in front of me and carefully dry them on the virgin paper sheets. The problem was how to get out of the room without grabbing the door handle. Suddenly, I saw the plight in which the phantom paper wrapper had found himself. What was the point in having the cleanest hands in Queensland if I was going to grab a handle on which several thousand 'flu germs might be lurking? If I touched it, I knew I'd be in bed by sunset and in hospital the next day with a raging fever and fighting for my life. I could emulate the phantom paper wrapper, though that would bring the wrath of my colleagues down on my head and I had no desire to be upended in the urinal. It was then that I hit on the coat sleeve trick. It started out with a shirt sleeve, on a day I was wearing a shirt made for a man with arms like an orangutan. As a result, there was a considerable overflow of sleeve and, as I stood in the men's room with my perfectly clean and freshly dried hands, it occurred to me that the extra length made a perfect glove. I had invented the shirt-glove! Pull the sleeve down over the fingers, grab the handle, open the door, pull the sleeve back up. It was true that the sleeve tended to descend at inopportune moments, such as just when you were about to shake someone's hand and he or she found themselves shaking the end of an empty sleeve, but generally it worked. I then progressed to coat sleeves. This is where the real skill comes in as you have to drop your shoulder out of the shoulder pad of your coat, slide the sleeve down, pull it over your hand, crouch down and grab the handle. You will find, however, that this crouch leaves you unbalanced and should someone push the door open from the other side just as you grasp it, you will be found lying on your back on the floor, one hand still hidden in the sleeve of your jacket. This can be embarrassing. What I need is a hook. Anyone know of a good pirate supplies shop? |
