Toiletbook - Anti-Social Media

In the past we have covered this subject in other lights so I will try to keep this brief. Human toileting habits have always been fairly “Ugg!”. We have always looked for discrete locations and privacy. It is only in the most dire of circumstances that we will forego those essentials. This discretion and privacy brings a little accidental “me time” to the process. It is here that the whole hygiene system falls down.

When I was a kid in the 70s, a book or comic was a great pastime for this function. As I grew up my literature choices changed but the format did not. Turn a few pages and lighten the load. It was the late 90s/early 2000s that really changed this.

I blame “snake”

. This was the first game for mobile phones. Before then it was only SMS that most people would have dared to engage with on the privy. Snake changed this. Now we had a decent distraction in our pockets and, thus, were phones on toilets our new dunny diversion.

Over the past 10 years, I have slowly eroded my view of social media. It is not the content (which can be very tedious) but the knowledge that most of the content from our friends and loved ones is created whilst easing oneself. We all know we do it. Here is where the entire system fails. Not that books and papers did not spread germs, of course they did. It is just that we didn’t then stick them to our faces. Gotcha! There you go. System failure.

Rewind. Back to my entry to the cubical. I wiped the seat. My awareness is that other people have sat there and their business has been VERY close to this item. I wipe. I am not alone in failing to remember the same about my own excretions and my handling of all the cleaning items I use in this process. I happily sit and burn through Facebook (about 90% of my Facebook time is spent doing my business…I wonder if we should rename it?). I finish, put down my phone, clean myself, flush, pick up the phone, place it in pocket, wash hands, pick phone out of pocket. Fail!

The simplest thing would have been to include my phone in my clean up routine. If there is toilet seat sanitiser available, then I should use it. I normally have disposable lens cleaning wipes in case I am away from my glasses case. They are perfect. All that needs to happen is that I add this single step to my toilet routines and I suddenly add phone hygiene to my life. Really, I am imploring facility managers to put up a polite sign on the back of the stall door reminding people of phone hygiene issues. A really simple gain for your facility users’ health. Maybe even remind people to wipe after themselves too as a courtesy to the next user.

Get in contact with Zenith Washrooms today (even by Facebook….) and let us help you improve your facility health in a time when people are present and conscious on the issue. Let’s make this nCovid thing work for our good in the long term. Let’s become more hygienic as a people.