I would like to take a moment to rant on the American obsession with toilet hygiene. Call me disgusting, but these things get to me:

  • The obsessive hand washing
    Back when I was contracting at Microsoft three years ago, I once got bitched at in the ladies room for not washing my hands. As I walked out of the restroom, a woman walking in and chided me in a singsong voice, “You didn’t wash your haaaands!”

    I only got a few steps from the bathroom door before stopping and being outraged. After 60 seconds of fuming, I turned around and walking back in to the ladies room, where the woman was now washing her hands — up to her elbows.

    “Excuse me,” I said, “Did you just reprimand me for not washing my hands?”

    “Yes, it’s disgusting,” she replied. “Diseases are spread that way.”

    “I would hope that you could trust me to know how not to defecate all over myself when using the restroom,” I said, trying to stay calm. “And the diseases you can catch from my hands would come from my mouth or eyes,” not from my ass! I wanted to say. But I didn’t.

    In the carpool on the way home that day, I recounted my story for my van-mates. Most giggled, but the driver (a Dutch man), got quite outraged and told me that, while I was free to piss all over myself and wipe it all over my OWN bathroom, when using an office restroom, I owed it to my coworkers not to be spreading my waste products via my hands.

    Now when I’m at work, I wash my hands. Even if when drinking tea all day, and peeing every 20 minutes…and drying my hands out to the point where I get hangnails all over the place, I’m not willing to risk getting bitched at for supposedly spreading my urine all over company staplers, copy machines, and door handles.

    That said, I do not think you need to wash your hands every time after using the restroom. Urine is sterile, but I should hope most of us are able to go to the bathroom without getting our doo doo all over our hands. That’s what toilet paper is for.

  • Speaking of paper, I hate toilet seat covers
    Seriously, could there be any better symbol of our culture’s obsession with personal space and paranoia of physical contact? Let me tell you something: if you can’t see anything on the toilet seat, it’s not going to hurt you. Even if you can see something, it’s probably just going to disgust you, not make you sick. Bacteria don’t like to live on cold, hard porcelain surfaces. It’s not like you’re licking the thing — you sit on it with your thighs and butt cheeks, neither of which are mucus membranes or particularly susceptible to disease.

    Now, for godsake: if you can SEE something on the toilet seat, don’t sit down. But if the toilet seat is dry and clean, YOU DON’T NEED A LITTLE PIECE OF PAPER TO PROTECT YOU FROM IT! Jeez, people. We’d all be healthier if we had MORE contact with germs.

    Europeans scoff at seat covers. “You Americans and your hate of sharing anything!” they laugh. I tend to agree with them. Feel free to call me disgusting and filthy — I get sick from people sneezing and coughing around me, not from using the bathroom.