Adventures in Bathroom Remodeling

Over the last few months the plain bathroom in the building where I work has been getting quite the makeover. It all began with the arrival of the Xtreme 4000 touch-less hand dryer. This unit appeared without fanfare on the wall one day, and looked much like any other hand dryer.

In all honesty I admit that I hate hand dryers. As far as I am concerned the procedure for using these things is as follows:

1. Put hands under dryer, or push the button, to start blower.
2. Rub hands together for 20-30 seconds.
3. Wipe hands on pants.

These things never work well enough to make them worth the effort. Despite the Pollyanna assurances printed on the dryer about its effectiveness, after rubbing my hands like Peter Lorrie for a while I usually have to implement step three to get my hands in a state somewhere close to "dry" in a reasonable time frame. Which means within half an hour.

I had no such problems with the Xtreme 4000. With a howl reminiscent of a F-14 taking off from the deck of the USS Enterprise, this hefty dryer could blow the skin off of a zombie. (No, I wasn't able to test that. Despite much looking on my part, no zombies were available.) As it turned out the "4000" in its name indicated the wind speed it produced. This "little dryer that could" dried my hands in about 5 seconds flat, and also rid them of hair and dry skin at the same time.

The problem the the Xtreme dryer was the noise. The scream of the dryer was deafening in the small cinder-block bathroom. I found it best to be ensconced on the throne in one of the two stalls if the blower was activated when I was not expecting it. Otherwise I had a mess to clean up. The sudden noise was so loud that it would literally scare the poop out of me.

Eventually the Xtreme 4000 was replaced by a much quieter automatic paper-towel dispenser. At first this unit was eager to please and we got along famously. I just had to wave my hand in its general direction and a foot of brown paper towel was dispensed for my hand-drying pleasure. It was no problem if I needed more as my little wall-mounted friend would happily produce towels for every wave of my hand. But then the dispenser changed toward me. As time passed its attention waned and I had to wave my hand closer and closer for it to take notice of me. It got to the point that I actually had to touch the device for it to give me what I needed. I knew our relationship had soured when it started making me wait five whole seconds between dispensing requests. No matter what I did to make amends, the spark was gone from our relationship. We still interact daily, but keep it on a purely professional level.

Then one weekend the building staff decided to put in new lighting. Before this remodeling project I can't say I ever noticed the configuration of the lights, but the room was always lit to a reasonable level. Unfortunately this was not the case after the new lights were installed. There must have been a "two-fer" sale at the Home Depot because they put in two florescent ceiling fixtures that hold four bulbs each, and a couple of smaller two-bulb fixtures over the sinks. That's twelve florescent bulbs in a 12x12 room! With this misguided implementation of the "more is better" philosophy, the end result was a room so bright that I found myself wishing for my sunglasses when I opened the bathroom door. Using the facilities was very problematic. As I tried to see through squinted eyes I think I successfully found the urinal. Eventually. (Sorry about the wall, guys.) When I got back to my desk one of my co-workers asked me where I had gotten the tan. This issue was finally resolved a couple of days later when most of the bulbs were removed so we could finally use the room with our eyes open. Ah, the luxury!

As a final exclamation point to the changes wrought in this room an automatic air freshener was added. At first all this device would do was beep in horror at being placed in such a small room. Later, it seemed to accept its lot and actually started to make noises like it was dispensing fragrance. While the building staff could have chosen scents like lilac, pine, or citrus, they went with the seldom-chosen poop scent. As you can imagine this has done nothing to improve the ambiance of the room. While Bugs Bunny might approve, this is one time I could have done without the use of a If-You-Can't-Beat-Em-Join-Em attitude.

I have no idea what is next for this little bathroom. After my painful episode with the paper towel machine I'm thankful that they haven't added automatic toilet paper dispensers, too. Those feelings are still too raw and I need time to heal. All I know is that if they add any kind of auto-magical butt-wiping machine I will be walking to the corner gas station for my sanitation needs. Trust me, it'll be worth it.