Wash the hands. Use anti-bacterial gel - if you must - afterwards. It's always good to wash your hands - provided you have clean water and access to soap.

Automatic faucets = good

Automatic soap = a little dumb and overkill but okay

Automatic hand dryer = good

Door with handle - hand towels = You IDIOTS! =P

Automatic toilet = worst idea with best intentions

All right, I'm rambling... I'll stop. XD

So, in some cases, it is MORE hygienic to NOT wash your hands. They don't make it easy.

Bemused,

That's completely counter-intuitive. When you wash your hands, you remove all filth that has built up/grown on your hand to that point. It's definitely easy enough to turn off the faucet with a paper towel in most cases, but even if you don't, it's still better to wash your hands. Your going to touch the door handle anyways if you didn't wash your hands aren't you? It's not like some magical fairy is going to come swooping down proclaiming that you don't receive additional germs by touching the door handle if you didn't wash your hands. It just adds on to what has already accumulated.

In any case, it's good to wash your hands a couple of times throughout the day anyways. The bathroom is just a convenient place to do it.

I was kind of shocked after reading this article, I didn't realize that many people DIDN'T wash their hands. I use public bathrooms a lot, and I don't recall EVER seeing a woman come out of the toilet stall and leave the room without washing her hands... I would definitely notice.

And two Senators and a Congressman were caught tapping their toes in the adjacent stalls.....

I once had a job as a custodian when I first got out of the service in '72 and the first Arab Oil Embargo (remember, those bastards where causing trouble back then, too) made it tough to find a job.

I can tell you from experience that women are 10 times as filthy in a public restroom then men. I hated having to go service the women's restrooms, they were pig stys. So don't give me that they wash their little hands more then men. It just ain't so.

I've heard the same thing. Actually I've heard that from several women. So when a woman tells you the women's bathrooms are filthy, then I have even a harder time believing they wash their hands more than men.

I'd say half of the women in my office ignore the hand washing rule. These women are also the ones who are constantly sick, especially with stomach ailments, and don't be fooled: women's restrooms are just as bad, if not worse, than men's. Why? Because they tend to flush sanitary items that will clog the toilet and make the toilets spill over, if you know what I mean.

One of the reasons women's bathrooms are nastier than men's is BECAUSE they wash their hands. Have you checked the trash cans? They're usually filled to the top. Washing hands = more paper towel usage = more waste. Also we tend to use more toilet paper than men. More toilet paper usage = more empty toilet paper rolls, more loose toilet paper scraps, more loose toilet seat cover scraps. Not to mention the waste from feminine products...

Women's restrooms are filthier simply by bodily design. Men pee into a urinal, while we don't have the luxury of that. Not to mention that monthly 'gift'. I agree women could be cleaner (and totally SHOULD be) but given the extra things we have to deal with, that's just the way it ends up.

There's a difference between being a germophobe (using hand sanitizer every time you come into contact with something) and being clean (washing your hands after you use the toilet).

I've stopped using Anti-bacterial soap, and only carry hand sanitizer for situations where there is no other way to clean up.

However, I disagree with you on your methods. Being a germophobe is almost as stupid as purposefully putting yourself in harms way. There is a happy medium, not being afraid to get dirty, but also not sharing a bath towel with someone who has HSV.

I'm not a germophobe.... hell, I teach a classroom full of snotty, drooling preschoolers without batting an eye. But I do wash my hands after going to the bathroom, and try not to touch surfaces in bathrooms. When people don't wash their hands, they leave behind traces of whatever they touched. I don't want someone else's poop particles getting on me, thank-you-very-much! Besides the gross factor, that's what causes pink eye, which is rampant among my students. Why? Because they're little and uncoordinated and don't wash their hands as well, then touch EVERYTHING.

I agree with cascadia- find a happy medium. Be clean, not obsessive, and not gross.

I thought it required holding steady???

One time, a Marine Corps guy walked out of the bathroom without washing his hands. An Air Force guy saw him and asked him why he didn't wash his hands and his response was "In the Marines, they teach us not to piss on our fingers."

Semper Fi

"Marines are REAL men and REAL men aren't afraid of germs." Hoo-Rah! Besides, if we were afraid of germs, then we wouldn't get to go to exotic places and stuff. Most of the places we go, we almost constantly get exposed to stuff like anthrax, malaria, and stuff like that, so in boot camp, they intentionally expose us to the stuff so we'll build up a resistance to it in case the enemy uses the stuff as biological warfare.

M-Crud was bad enough. Then a 24 hour Liberty to 'Les Girls' on Midway and Rosecrans toughened us up!

Hence why us Marines see no need to wash our hands every time we touch something. Makes us tougher with every exposure. If biological war breaks out, we'll be the only survivors because we let ourselves build up a resistance to most of the stuff. I always laugh when I see people run for the local wash room every time they touch something, then they wonder why their medical bills are so high. HA! These "germophobes" make people with OCD seem normal. Up until this whole germophobe thing came into play, the only people I've seen who wash their hands almost constantly were those with OCD. Now, it seems like everyone washes their hands every time they touch something. Either its a germophobia epidemic or the number of undiagnosed cases of OCD has gone way up. Either way, its both sad and funny at the same time.

Hell, I ate snake and monkey in 'Nam in the boonies on a 30 day LRRP and never saw a bar of soap or hot water! Not a problem the entire time....Well, with the food. Charlie was another story.

There wasn't even fresh, clean water in nam anyway, so even if we had soap, it wouldn't have mattered. No clean water in Afghanistan, either. At least, not in the desert areas. Besides, not having soap means one less thing to carry around, and that's a good thing when you have to be on your feet and mobile all day long. If you ever get the chance to catch and cook a Cobra, do it. Once you drain the venom and stuff, they're good eating. Cactus is good, too, if you know how to fix it right.

Problem with Afghanistan is them bastids wait for us to go use the washroom then try to blow up the damn washroom. They are sneaky like that. I'd rather skip the washroom and stay alive than go in for a soak and risk getting blown up. We can't even move as a group without getting something blown up in our faces.

Mnaines... thank-you for your service....

Paul - just a note from survial training. Get a cut and you can wash it out with urine from the male only because there is no other areas that it has to pass before hitting the target so to speak. Better to use your pee than some dirty water with germs.

...and yet you eat restaurant food, having no more idea if the preparers are scratching their butt-cracks while tossing your salad than you do about whether those pot-luck preparers are washing their hands at home.

Can't wait to hear julie's rant when Big Brother does something to earn even her ire.

Perhaps there is a link between your restroom observations and the frequency with which Floridians are featured on "Cops" and "America's Most Wanted." Maybe there is something in the water....

LOL!

The title, Restroom Spies, is just plain creepy!

Somebody needs a beatin'!

With unwashed hands!

Hard to believe spying in the restroom is legal...

All these people who wash their hands every time they touch something...Its no wonder half of America is so poor. Most of them have so many medical bills from all the trips to the ER every time they get sick. You run to the ER every time you catch the flu or your kid starts sneezing or gets an ear infection, you won't touch a faucet or eat leftovers, and you use hand sanitizer every time you touch something, then you whine and complain that you don't have any money. Its sad when more than half of your income goes to medical bills because you run to the ER every time you get sick. Its even more sad when you whine to the government to help you because you don't have any money.

Hahahahahahahahaha! Good point!

Riiiiight, that's what I was thinking!

Right, bacteria just leap up out of the water, is that it? Most toilets are designed to flush without splashing, so please, give me the physics of how a cloud of bacteria can overcome the surface tension of water and become airborne.

Certain product manufactures made up that schlock and have been selling it (and their products) to good effect ever since!

True. I swing open the stall doors at work as fast as I can and run out. The toilets here throw water everywhere. It's utterly disguisting.

I don't think most people look to shake the hands of people who just left a restroom, and I doubt (though I could be wrong) if most people ask everyone whose hand they are about to shake if they just left one.

Since you KNOW there are germs on the faucet, dryer and door, but you usually DON'T know if everyone whose hand you're about to shake has even been in a restroom in the last, say hour or more, it seems you're more worried about that which you don't know to be a threat than what you should know is! Weird.

Several of us on this message board do.

They're looking for their Senators or Congessmen....

Amen, TaoMokoda.

Oh, I know public restrooms have spies. That's why I avoid them if at all possible. I don't spend hours in a store just looking for what I want. When I shop, I know what I'm going in for, where to find it, and I'm in and out in just a few minutes. Completely eliminates impulse buys and allows me to be back to familiar territory before I have to use the restroom again.

By the way, yes, spying on people while they're heeding the call of nature is illegal. Its called "invasion of privacy" and spying on your child's online activities falls under the same rule. The only two legal options you have in that situation are to either stand there looking over your kid's shoulders or force your kid to use the same computer everyone else does. If its a shared computer, then you can legally go in and track the days and times the x-rated sites were opened and then use that information to see if your teenager was looking at that stuff.

ANY TIME you get your teenage son or daughter their own computer or phone, you give up your legal rights to monitor their activities. And don't expect your cell phone provider to give you info about who called who or what the text messages were about. Most of that information is stored on a big server someplace and nobody monitors it. If the law goes in and subpoenas them, then they'll go into their files and look at the dates and times in question, but that's it. They get so much information coming into their servers so quickly that they don't have the manpower or money to have someone monitoring the logs 24/7. Your ISP is the same way.