Popped to the toilet whilst in a bar on a Saturday night and it’s time to wash your hands: Got to turn the tap on…YOURSELF. Actually use energy from your own body to dispense water...the indignity! Then you have to summon the strength to push your hand against the dispenser to release that clean gooey fresh smelling soap gooey goo. If you're still able to stand you can again activate the tap, this time to swill your hands. Sounds hard work so far? Hold onto your desk, cause this next bit might just blow your bollocks off: An energy sapping four second walk to a hand-dryer!!! Yes this whole process does not cost you anything financially, but with only 190 calories in each of the four pints of lager you've had so far, this has surely been a reckless expulsion of valuable energy.
At least this is what someone thought. Sometime, I don’t know when and I don’t know where, somebody saw this as a gap in a market. And that’s why, sprinkled throughout bars whose names begin with the word “Bar”, toilet attendants stand poised at their sink, ready to make the whole arduous process of achieving clean hands an effortless yet financially burdened process.
But the rather damning truth is that I’ve never, in my whole life met anyone who has been glad that they are in a bar that has a toilet attendant. Never been in a pub where someone’s come back after going for a piss in an attendentless convenience looking completely knackered, complaining that washing their own hands has completely wiped them out and that they’re going to have to go home early to have a lie down.
Going...
You’re a target the minute you enter their lair. “Hello” he says mouth smiling, eyes fixed like an eagle on a rabbit. As the only ‘customer’ in the room at that moment, I abandon any thought of using a urinal. I’m not up to the challenge of going with someone staring at me intensely, manically tapping on a squeezy bottle of soap singing “Freshen up, freshen up, you really gotta freshen up.”
I hide myself safely away in the furthest cubical, knowing I have to stay in there for an amount of time that would justify its use over a urinal. I weigh up my options. I can’t just walk straight out. I may just of got away with that if I’d used just a urinal, but coming out of a cubical; well that’s doubly wrong. I have to wash my hands.
Why should I not wash my own hands? Why should I put up with being forced into the service of this person; compelled to place a pound coin on his stupid angry saucer for fifteen unwanted seconds of his mis-placed labour. I wont. I'll sanitise to my own rules. I shall produce the cleanest pair of hands in England with my own sweat and toil.
I throw open the cubical door, stride confidently towards the unoccupied basin. “Freshen up?”, I ignore his plea. My naivety means I think that I’ve beaten him. Soon I realise I haven’t. A flash of movement and he pulls out his final card. His finger primed on the trigger of the cheapest fragrance in England. The nuzzle aimed directly at my face. “I’m not afraid to use this thing,” he informs me his smile sharpening, “we either do this the easy way or the Slazenger Sport way.”
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