I absolutely hate the rest room by my new office. It was clearly designed by someone with a Catbert-like hatred of employees. Either that or it was designed by someone with the sanity of the guests at the tea party in Alice in Wonderland.

Pretty much all of my hatred for the rest room revolves around the washing up phase. There are three sinks there. The left sink opens like any sane sink in the USA – counter-clockwise. The right sink, however, opens clockwise. So right off the bat, depending on which sink you use, you will probably end up looking like a fool who doesn’t know which way to turn the knob to turn on the water. And then turning it off again often has me first opening the water even more.

Then there are the soap dispensers. They are automatic (which is weird because neither the faucets nor the paper dispensers are). Whoever programmed them to dispense the soap set the timing to randomly vary from right away to just as soon as I move my hand away. Sometimes it takes a good two to three attempts to get some soap on my hands. I’m not even sure what problem they were meant to solve. They aren’t part of a touch-free solution. It can’t be to keep soap from dripping onto the counter because that’s exactly what happens when it waits to dispense soap until I move my hands.

Finally the paper towel dispensers seem to be set to somehow always dispense either a half-size piece of paper towel or a double size paper towel. And it always seems to happen in that order. You first pull out a half sheet that can’t even dry one hand and then you pull a double-sheet that is more than enough to dry both your hands and waste some extra tree for good measure.