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Public restrooms

It's summer time, and the family is hitting the road more often than usual. And one of the great joys of travel is the joy of using public restrooms. Yes, people are slobs, and as near as I can tell both genders are equally guilty, but my biggest gripe is with the idiots that mount the toilet paper dispensers.

I am painfully aware of the Americans with Disabilities Act, being 6' tall and having an intermittently bad back, it's such a joy having to bend over to wash my hands at child level sinks, but for the life of me I cannot understand why the toilet paper dispensers are mounted at the lowest possible height allowed by law (19"). This is especially frustrating considering that most commercial toilets are at least 16" or higher, and invariably the dispenser is mounted right next to the toilet itself, not a few inches in front, so that you practically have to get up and turn around to get a handfull of paper. Also fun are the dispensers that are mounted below (!) the level of the toilet, these are usually found in stalls that are so small you practically have to stand on the toilet to close the door behind you, so if you don't grab the TP before sitting down, you might as well forget the whole thing.

Those double roll dispensers are nice, allowing restroom cleaning staff to avoid the chore for much longer periods of time, and are usually mounted a bit further out, but provide different challenges. When mounted too low, the paper is very difficult to grab, as it somehow always tears too far up, and you have to wedge your hand up in the dispenser to try to spin the roll around.

This isn't just a challenge for adults, kids have issues too. I've seen kids fall off the potty while fishing for TP, always good for a few snickers from the adults that witness this, but terribly embarrassing if you happen to be the parent of the unfortunate youngster.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on June 8, 2008 2:16 PM.

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