Someone on the third floor of the English building has a real problem with people who don’t wash their hands. Right now there are nine signs in the bathroom begging, threatening, or trying to scare people into washing their hands. Some are just friendly little signs with a happy person washing their hands. Others show close-ups of the influenza virus and tell us that this will be our fate if we don’t wash with soap and water, and preferably repeat. My favorites are the ones geared toward us graduate students, which take famous passages from books and incorporate clever little messages of hygiene. For example:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was a time when people rarely, if ever, washed their hands - in short, it was a very dirty time, full of sickness and disease.”
Oddly, these signs it not last long. I assume some indignant student was appalled to see Dickens, Melville, and Twain used in an advertising campaign, no matter how noble the end may be, and tore them down in a fit of existential despair. I rather enjoyed them and varied whatever stall I was using in a given day so I could read the whole collection.
Last week a bottle of fancy hand soap showed up in the bathroom, with a sign attached stating that it was for “hand washers ONLY!!!!” This shows an odd bout of anger against people who don’t wash their hands and an odd lack of forethought. Is the mystery soap provider trying to entice people who normally don’t wash their hands with a bit of reverse psychology (and the desire to smell like raspberries) or are they trying to exclude non-hand washers from the fun of using fancy soap? Why would people who don’t wash their hands want to use the soap anyway? Was their really any reason to specify who could and could not use the soap? If they wanted to tempt non-hand washers into using soap they should have gotten some of those fancy guest soaps that are shaped like roses or seahorses. Everyone loves those.
The 1st, 2nd, and 4th floor bathrooms don’t have any signs at all, leading me to wonder if we are naturally dirtier on the 3rd floor and need more policing. I have been keeping my eyes open, but everyone seems neat and clean and I have never seen anyone skip the ritualistic hand washing. I, however, am considering giving up the whole pointless ordeal. I have been washing my hands all year with both fancy and non-fancy soap and I have suffered from the flu and a cold, both illnesses the signs specifically state hand washing will keep away. I might start my own anti-hand washing campaign. My first sign will go a bit like this:
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, probably because they washed their hands like The Man wanted them to and yet they still got sick and eventually threw themselves in front of a train.”
4 responses so far ↓
beetqueen // January 21, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Well, you are now on the 3rd floor, so obvious it is dirty. I’ve seen the soap in your house…that stuff never gets used. And you did have pink eye, which everyone knows is the dirty person’s disease.
themcp // January 22, 2008 at 1:27 pm
handwashing is for chumps.
specialagentdalecooper // January 22, 2008 at 6:28 pm
The interesting thing about excessive over-washing (not just of the hands but in general) is that in the long run it makes you more illness-prone, by preemptively getting rid of ordinary germs that your immune system would usually be fighting on its own and thus using to keep itself robust. As a people we are a little too crazy about cleanliness. I try to counteract this by dropping all my food on the floor for several minutes before eating it.
I consume a lot of cat hair.
Shae // January 24, 2008 at 12:56 am
Is the soap antibacterial, by chance? If so you can post some of those articles that say that antibacterial soaps don’t reduce our disease risks but in fact may be leading to antibiotic resistant super-diseases.
Not quite as poetic as Twain, but a good rebuttal nonetheless, I think.
And I hate to sound like a dirty hippie here, but I’m of the mind that if you don’t get anything on your hands — and hey, it’s possible not to get anything on your hands, especially for women — then there’s no point in washing them and exposing them to the germy community washing facilities, much less the increased risk of dry skin.
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