The Relativity Of Clean
The image above is from Kile Galliart and I think it’s funny. However, dirty people aren’t so funny. Over the last few weeks of Swine Flu news, the one thing that you might have heard often, and even from President Obama, was “Wash your hands.” This is one of those things that I assumed the masses have heard before, starting from when they were children. Somehow it appears that the notion of cleanliness and manners seemed to have been lost with a great many people. In “manners” I’m referring to the other thing we’ve heard a lot lately, “Cover your mouth when coughing or sneezing.” I learned about washing and covering as a child and it’s strange to me that so many people seem to have never learned, forgotten, or just don’t care. Regardless of transmitting germs, it just seems like common cleanliness and courtesy.
My non-scientific observations have led me to believe that people are less concerned about hand washing if other people aren’t around. The “relativity of clean”. Case in point:
On the floor of the office building where I work, there are three bathroom options shared by two companies. Two “private” single restrooms equipped with commode and sink in each, and one multi-stall “public” bathroom with two sinks. The single restrooms are next to each other so you can hear through the wall when people use the sinks. So far from what I can hear, no one using the single bathrooms ever washes their hands. Ever. Mind you, the private bathrooms are used by anyone and they are often in use. In the public restrooms, people sometimes wash with soap, sometimes not. On the other hand, in large places like sports stadiums or department stores, I’ve seen people behaving like paranoid germaphobes, eyeing strangers suspiciously as though they are carriers of as-yet-to-determined viruses. These people will strain themselves using their elbows to dispense soap, turn on the water, and crank out a paper hand towel. They elbow the door open, use a paper tower to grab a doorknob, or use their foot to wedge a door open.
The point? I think some people only care about cleanliness if they think other people will give them germs, as though strangers are the only carriers of germs when in fact, these people are themselves the unwashed, germie people! Ha! Blah!
