Magic Soap and Magic Water

Several years ago I was at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a high school trip. A friend of mine came out of the bathroom and she told me she heard something funny. A girl in the bathroom was explaining to her mommy that the NASA had magic soap and magic water. Referring, of course, to the sensors that turn on the water in the sinks and what not.

I don't want to sound like a Kevin Smith or Quentin Tarentino movie, but.....
Do we really need sensors on the toilets and sinks in public restrooms? Before I get into whether or not the technology actually works, think for just a minute. Do we NEED this? Is it a problem to push the lever to flush the toilet? Lets not be gross, but can we not do this? I mean there are some things that could be on the handle, but really and truly they probably aren't anything that cannot be reasonably washed away. Now, I'd have to ask Stephanie, but I doubt that there have been many reported cases of people purposely contaminating the toilet handle for the pure evil of it all. So what are we saying here? "We know you don't like to wash your hands, so now we've given you another reason not to have to."

That said, they don't always work either. So you sit there. You try to sit still so that you don't set it off accidently. But it flushes anyway. You breath funny, you lean forward, you lean back, you shift. It takes no movement at all hardly and WHOOSH. Then what happens? You're finished, you get up and it doesn't flush. Sorry, this happened to me recently. I couldn't make it flush. It flushed 4 or 5 times when I wasn't ready. I got up, couldn't make it flush. Finally I did, because I'm not a jerk. Then I went to the sink. I got soap on my hand, put my hands under the sensor and the water came on. I lathered my hands up good, and the water turned off. Guess what. Couldn't make it come back on. I tried three different sinks. It took forever to finally get one to work.

I don't know. Its just another one of those changes for the change sake things. Theres no reason to do it, they just do it to look like they are doing something. But no one stops to think: Do we need this?

aaaaaah what do I know.

-T