In its never-ending war against government interference with the perfect life, National Review recommends to us today an essay by Matthew Crawford about the indignity of motion-sensitive bathroom faucets. I'd normally try to provide you with an abridged excerpt, but it's really better if you read it in its full glory:
It is characteristic of the spirited man that...when he finds himself in public spaces that seem contrived to break the connection between his will and his environment, as though he had no hands, this brings out a certain hostility in him. Consider the angry feeling that bubbles up in this person when, in a public bathroom, he finds himself waving his hands under the faucet, trying to elicit a few seconds of water from it in a futile rain dance of guessed-at mudras. This man would like to know: Why should there not be a handle? Instead he is asked to supplicate invisible powers.
It’s true, some people fail to turn off a manual faucet. With its blanket presumption of irresponsibility, the infrared faucet doesn’t merely respond to this fact, it installs it, giving it the status of normalcy. There is a kind of infantilization at work, and it offends the spirited personality.
To maintain decorum, the angry bathroom user does one of two things. He may seethe silently, succumbing to that self- division between inner and outer that is the mark of the defeated. In that case, the ratchet of his self-respect makes one more click in the wrong direction. Alternatively, he makes an effort to reevaluate his own response as unreasonable. In either case, he is called upon to do a certain emotional work on himself. Often the murky fog of prescriptions that gets conveyed implicitly in our material culture would have us interpret as somehow more rational a state of being manually disengaged. More rational because more free.
I have to admit there's something epic about this rage against hands-free operation. And yes, when motion-sensitive faucets work poorly they can be annoying.
But the reason for their existence is far more prosaic than Crawford imagines. There's no infantilization at work, nor an ideological battle against hands. The benefits of motion-sensitive faucets are twofold: they are sanitary and they are ADA compliant. ADA doesn't require hands-free faucets, but it does require either hands-free or a handle with a light touch. For obvious reasons, handles with a light touch don't always fare well in commercial environments, so motion-sensitive faucets have become popular. That's really all there is to this.
As for Crawford's "few seconds of water" from "a futile rain dance of guessed-at mudras," ADA guidelines actually require 10 seconds of water. If you're getting less, don't blame either the disabled or a bureaucratic disdain for spirited men. Instead blame lousy maintenance, a scourge of cheap corporations and water faucets of all types.
my god, conservatives are mind-numbingly stupid and incomprehensibly whiny.
No no, they're "spirited."
only if they think they can blame the gummint*
conservatives are remarkably complacent regarding any manner of indignities doled out by medical insurance/drug companies, cell companies, cable monopolies, etc.
but ask them to wave their hands for a few seconds to have free water flow out of a faucet... outrage!
(* the big loophole is that in their eyes most law enforcement isn't gummint, unless it's the atf or irs leading the investigation)
it's also insane because you don't have to wave your hands around for a few seconds to make touchless sinks work (or at least i haven't found that to be the case). they work just fine, are pretty much instantaneous and are FAR preferable to having to touch a dirty public bathroom sink. this is the epitome of old man waves at cloud level complaining.
You have interacted with an entirely different set of touch free sinks than I have. At least half of the ones I try to use are extremely finicky, and there are a few that I just have to give up on. Though, admittedly, the touch free soap dispensers are even worse.
They really are an unmitigated annoyance. They just don't merit the kind of prose on display here.
Well, in the very next post, lefty Atrios is finding some ancient history to bitch about. Bitching is the Brand!
"Geez, my NR boss is getting impatient. Lemme see, what to write about?
AI? nah, Stock Market? nah, Hamas? nah, Ukraine? nah, A total nut job is running ahead in the polls? nah. 18,000+ gun fatalities? nah , Global warming? Nah . . .
Oh wait! "Motion faucets" !
Yeah !!!!! That's the ticket!!! Thank god I dodged that writer's block bullet again !
and i thought "I" had too much time on my hands
Real conservatives don’t bother with sinks. They hire a burly chested lumberjack to spit on your hands and laugh in your face.
If hands-free faucets worked as they should, no one would complain. But with many of them, you do have to hunt around for several seconds to figure out where to put your hands to get the water to flow. This exercise is exacerbated by the built-in activation delay that exists presumably to avoid false positives, leading to a phase shift between hand position and activation large enough to induce instability and oscillation; it really is a dance.
And many of them shut off almost immediately after your hand is out of range of the sensor. No ten-second grace period here.
It's obvious nobody developing the mandates ever talked to an engineer. People with experience designing and evaluating systems, and address vulnerabilities and fail-points (as you mention). Legislators are above all that with their Olympian pronouncements that presume a perfect world.
Are you suggesting that it's not reasonable to expect hands-free faucets to work the way they're supposed to?
I wish I were more impressed with the quality of engineering in plumbing systems. My experience with domestic water service as a homeowner is that reliability and maintainability are given short shrift, and standards are virtually unknown. Identification of parts is a nightmare. That’s all on industry, not regulators.
Clearly a guy who doesn't get far without a dose of fortifying spirits.
Hah!
+1
The real outrage here is this guy's prose. I mean I get that he's mad about faucets, but beyond that this is indecipherable.
The man disagrees.
Ah, but it has to be read with a plummy Brit accent in arch tones, picturing the speaker in an ascot and a tweed jacket with elbow patches, gesturing with a lit pipe. Basically something out of the 1920s.
The very definition of what makes someone "conservative."
I just returned from Spain where they have (maybe I don't spend enough time in US public washrooms, mind, this was in the new Madrid airport) motion sensor (1) water, (2) soap, and (3) air dry, all right at the sink.
So instead of one of those air drying thingies, if there are four sinks there are four separate air dryers.
To argue that motion sensors in bathrooms (including motion sensor flushing) are some sort of step backward really requires a certain bizzaro world.
They are also there for hygiene. If the guy before you (or even you) has schmutz on his hands, he has to touch the water knob before he washes, and then again to reapply the schmutz to both knob and hand.
Then you come in, have to touch if before you wash your hands, hopefully wash it all off, but then have to touch it again, thus reapplying the schmutz.
That said, they are infuriating when they don't work properly, and they almost never work properly.
Agreed. The reports of fecal matter on the handles of nearly everything spooked everyone into not touching anything, then Covid made it even worse.
Wouldn't be an issue if it all worked impeccably.
Some people would rather write a lengthy screed for the National Review than spend five minutes in therapy.
Your comment made my comment redundant. Right on.
You can buy "therapy" in five minute blocks? Just like, ah, feminine companionship? Who knew??
The other benefit of motion-sensing faucets is water conservation. Which may not matter in other parts of the world, but here in the southwestern US that's a big deal.
"Water conservation"? Seriously? When the faucet blasts on, at top volume, for a full ten seconds? Maybe my washing technique is off, but I always wet my hands, soap them, work the soap around for a full minute or two without further wetting, and then rinse. So that would be 20 full seconds of top volume drinking quality water, or at least twice what's needed.
So I guess I need to dispense with the initial "wetting" phase, right?
I'm guessing there was an incident in the man's past not elucidated in the article that was sticky, embarrassing, and required much more water than was provided...
and those gas station sinks sure do make it hard to rinse your mouth
"blame lousy maintenance,"
That's a cop-out. Mandated systems that are that dependent on regular maintenance are going to lead to problems Do you expect the faucet in a bathroom on a trail in a national park to be maintained frequently? Get real.
With handles, the maintenance issue is vastly reduced. ADA compliance could have IR sensitive activation AND non light touch handles. Why not do that? Does ADA compliance demand a one-size-fits-all solution? If so, that's a classic example of legislative buffoonery.
Also, IR sensitive activation means no water during a power outage. Are we all okay with that? Consider solutions that have backup capabilities when mandating things.
"ADA compliance could have IR sensitive activation AND non light touch handles. Why not do that?"
Because now you're requiring maintenance again.
"Does ADA compliance demand a one-size-fits-all solution?"
No. It requires hands-free OR handle with a light touch.
"Also, IR sensitive activation means no water during a power outage."
In that scenario the bathroom is pitch-dark anyway.
"Do you expect the faucet in a bathroom on a trail in a national park to be maintained frequently?"
Is it an ADA-accessible trail? If so then yes. The NPS is keenly aware of ADA issues, because they have to decide which parts of parks are accessible and which parts aren't, and provide appropriate accommodations where needed.
non light touch handles require much less maintenance; faucet knobs and gaskets last a long time and are reliable
"hands-free OR handle with a light touch" is a one-size-fits-all solution since it excludes non light tough handles; it is a solution that excludes consideration of those who aren't disabled
In that scenario the bathroom is pitch-dark anyway.
Not true, Bathrooms have windows in many situations or have emergency power for lighting to facilitate exit, but not other devices.
Not every sink has to be ADA compliant. When I see sinks with handles, there tends to be one ADA sink and the rest standard. Motion sensors tend to be lower maintenance (fewer moving parts) and less susceptible to leaks.
As someone who works in security, let me assure you that motion detectors are annoying as fuck. Setting them such that they respond to what you want to detect and not respond to what you don't want them to is basically impossible. You can generate a ton of false positives, or you can miss the things you need to be aware of. There's no middle ground.
Security cameras are usually set to produce lots of false positives, necessitating action every time a car drives past, or there's a bird in your warehouse, or a strong breeze is disturbing the branches of the trees.
Touch free sinks are set to avoid opening the spigot every time someone walks past going to and from the toilets, so it's a pain in the ass to get them to do so for a pair of hands flapping right in front of them.
What's interesting is that the ADA compliant sink described is for people who can see where to put the hands in order to activate water flow. Those with vision problems, including the blind, would benefit from knobs that can be felt and turned.
A lot of comments here are four-square in favor of having ONLY the ADA compliant system in use. Many buildings have ramps and stairs. Should the stairs be removed b/c they can't be used by the disabled?
I'm advocating (where practicable and affordable) dual systems and not viewing every system exclusively through the ADA lens.
As a vampire, I really hate these things.
Plumbing is for p*ssies.
It wasn’t that long ago that George Will was whining that people who supported trains hate the freedom that cars give to each driver.
Crawford's essay reminds me of the articles published in the National Lampoon in the early seventies.
A bunch of college lit students are amazed that they suddenly have a large audience and decide to write the most inane things they can think of.
best answer
Well *I* for one am outraged that there is not more sensitivity on the part of your readers to what obviously is not only a serious problem in our society -- and indeed an indicator of even more and deeper serious problems -- but also his clear and heartfelt expression of distress! Really, where is the empathy, where is the compassion for his pain?
These guys are bunch of weirdos looking for stuff to be angry about. That and they don't pay the water bill.
It really is victimhood all the time with them, isn't it?
And if we're going to complain about public restrooms, it's more often the soap dispensers which irritate me. Does the soap come out directly below the oversized arm projecting from the top that you push, or does it squirt out from the bottom of the main part closer to the wall? You don't know until you try!
Yeah! And ANOTHER thing! Sometimes the soap is yellow! Yellow?!? Don't they have any idea what that reminds people of? Do they think we're stupid?! Why do all these ee-leetist libruls. with their gummint "ADA-compliant" and "sanitary" and whatever, think we're stupid? Why I never froth foam rant gag ...
With all of his ranting about shower heads & the like, you'd think that this might be next on trump's list of outrages - everything mandated by the government or skimping on water is a personal affront.
And any media owner who pays someone for writing this should be embarrassed, if not ashamed.
Thank you all for the humorous responses!
It's easy to forget the freedoms we once had, ever since the socialist regime was ushered into power by the elimination of incandescent lightbulbs. Was it all a dream?
I’m pretty sure real men don’t wash their hands at all. Just shake it off, tuck it back in and wipe your hands on your pants if any liquid is on them. Problem solved with no hint of health authorities or ADA scolds being involved.
From responses to similar issues on other sites, I would say you're right. Male men seem to think their urine is "sterile" and nobody should object to a nice, moist handshake.
I don't know, I kind of liked it. Not the content but as a screed that let's you know this man's frustration. He searches for words that can fully express his exasperation. I don't get that wound up about handleless faucets but what about stop lights that haven't been recalibrated for horseless carriages or packages you can't open without a trip to Harbor Freight and don't even talk to me about garden hoses that kink and cannot resist tying themselves in a knot. I think he did fine. It was a good laugh.
It puts the water on its hands. Then it shuts up and leaves.
Okay, perhaps I missed a few, but based on the responses I've seen, we must all be lily white anglos. Nobody seems to have brought up the issue of the light sensors not working if one has very dark skin.
Also, apropos of nothing, those ADA-compliant door "knobs" (handles) are eas-peasy, but also work just as well for cats ... and bears.
I wonder what Mr Anti-ADA would say about a lavatory I encountered in a local bar & grill? It was a smooth, featureless slab of black marble, a simple counter. No "sinks", just taps for water and fluffy hand soap. As you approached a water tap, it would gush water onto your hands, which would drain efficiently into the back (mirror side) of the counter, which had an imperceptible slant and a slit drain all along the back.
Those non-sink sinks are showing up everywhere, like in any newer airport rest room. Often with auto-soap and auto-dryer at each auto-spigot.
My theory is that conservatives have found themselves as a cultural minority, and like the leftists of old, they see themselves as forever besieged and oppressed. Things like Covid restrictions, ADA regulations and DEI dictates enrage them by reminding them that the world isn't theirs anymore.
As somewhat of a germaphobe, I actually LIKE the hands-free public sinks! Also, WTF is a "spirited man"? Context would seem to indicate it's a shorter phrase for "angry MAGA jerk."
Medical facilities used to have faucets with long paddle handles for use with your forearm or pedal activated valves. The pedal versions in particular were obviously a lot more expensive than a simple hand operated water valve. Both for the same reason as the motion detectors: touchless operation.
What a worthless rant.
Ngl, ADA compliance really is annoying in a number of ways but in others its real nice and a little annoyance its worth it so a bunch of people can navigate society on their own.
I would like the sensors to be more generous in when they sense to activate and how long however
This is part of a fine old conservative tradition. I'm sure their forefathers were whining about self starting cars, automatic doors, elevators, saddles and probably cooked food.