Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Throwing in the Towel

Just a quick note to the person who finally ripped the front off the paper-towel "dispenser" at the Cosi in Chelsea: Could you please step forward so I can hug you and let the world know you're my hero?

What a relief to finally see I'm not the only person out there who has noticed that these so-called paper-towel dispensers are the most user-unfriendly, unintuitive pieces of crap in the history of engineering. (Do I need a post-graduate degree from M.I.T. to dry my fucking hands off?) What was so wrong with the old metal ones that had a little crank on the right side? These companies have only ONE job to do -- make their products dispense papers towels -- yet they can't even do THAT? This indented plastic dial that I'm supposed to somehow A) know is a crank and B) get a grip on when my hands are wet? No. And that's one of the "good" ones. I only wish I had thought to photograph some of the doozies I've seen over the years. Until then, my hero, my (paper) hat off to you.

2 comments:

BW said...

Nothing quite like poor industrial or interface design to get a Walsh riled up. (Ask me about computers sometime!)

The new paper-towel dispensers *always* get irreparably jammed. And the other thing is the trend toward "hands-free" electronic-eye activation in all things restroom. The trouble there, even if the things work, is that each restroom is in its own stage of conversion, and so you never know whether it's just the sink that works that way, or sink plus toilet, or sink plus toilet plus paper towels, or sink plus toilet plus soap dispenser, or whatever, and so I find myself standing there like an idiot waving my hands under a towel dispenser half the time only to finally see the piss-poor substitute for a metal crank. (And then I see that the thing is irreparably jammed.)

Jay said...

i think all towel dispensers should be replaced with that "turbo hand blow dryer" thing...it works great!