Employees Must Wash Hands

The restrooms where I work got shiny new dispensers for the toilet paper, soap, and paper towels last week. Not exactly a major news story, but I couldn't help but notice that it didn't necessarily result in an improvement in the restroom experience. The soap is the foamy kind, which is fine; it's a little nicer than the gel-like substance it replaced, and lathers more easily. The paper towel dispenser requires a combination of pulling down on the towel and pushing in on a piece of plastic that sits behind the towel, which is pretty counterintuitive, and kind of dumb. The toilet paper is wider and thicker, but quite a bit coarser than what it replaced. So that's 1 for 3. Maybe I'd better stop wishing they'll do something about how the restroom smells.

[On closer inspection, I determined that the plastic push bar is there to help the towel along if pulling off one sheet does not bring the next sheet far enough out of the dispenser to be pulled. My bad. But it's still somewhat kludgy, so 1.5 out of 3.]

Also work-related, but with broader implications as well: just how lazy do you have to be to ride the elevator down one floor? I see this about once a week. Our office is on the sixth floor, which is the top of the building, so I feel somewhat justified in riding the elevator (although, since we publish health newsletters, we are always being guilted encouraged to use the stairs, and quite a few people do). But people persist in riding from five to four, or three to two. And these are not people with crutches or walkers or wheelchairs; these are able-bodied types, generally in their twenties, and since the rest of the building is a library, most of them are medical students. If anyone should be taking the stairs, it should be them, right? Setting the example?