Source: Peter Van den Bossche from Mechelen, Belgium [CC BY-SA 2.0]
Have you ever walked into a toilet that has not been flushed! Way to ruin my moment, person who used the toilet before me! This doesn’t happen to me often during my day to day life in Prague. But it’s happened over and over again since I’ve been in North America for the past month. I’ve been baffled by it but I have a theory.
What is up with automatic toilets? They sometimes flush when I’m sitting down or hovering down. Or they flush multiple times. And sometimes, they don’t flush at all or not when you’re done! And then to confuse matters, some toilets do not flush automatically, at all, ever (the default in Prague)!!
Have automatic toilets made us lazy, inattentive, unobservant or …? I don’t think people are intentionally out to ruin our moments so not flushing must be a mistake, right? As in, people are overwhelmed by the variety of toilet mechanisms and can’t figure out if they should flush or not. So basically, people default to expecting automatic toilets that work well, and are inattentive to the situations when that’s not the case.
In conclusion, this is a public service announcement. Next time you’re done using the toilet, look back before you step out. Do unto others with as much consideration as you can muster.
(Another thing I wonder about, why/how do people end up putting what looks like a whole roll of toilet paper in the toilet?)
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