Letters to the Editor
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The Damn Things Don't Work!
I apologize for skirting the substantial issues raised at length in the article, but the very thought of those bogus hot-air "hand dryers" in public restrooms transforms me into a raging amalgamation of Andy Rooney and Ralph Nader.
The damn things don't work! Let me amend that: last week, I visited a restroom in a New Jersey restaurant equipped with an enormous white hand-dryer with a nozzle like a Titan V rocket. It was so powerful that one's skin rippled like bedsheets hung out in the breeze; it worked.
That was the exception, trust me. Otherwise, that malign invention is just a shuck, a fraud arising from an unholy alliance between landlords and amoral manufacturers out to make a buck. Years ago, the slumlord of the building where I work sent out a memo trumpeting the abolition of paper towel dispensers in favor of the more "sanitary and efficient" hot air dryers.
When the building manager stopped by our office, I asked, "Do you have these installed in your home?" Does anyone? And spare me the suggestion that they work fine as long as one uses the correct technique; as Jerry Seinfeld has observed, this invention requires a man to stand leisurely in a place filled with a revolting stench.
I might not be so keen an observer of men's room behavior as Larry Craig, but my empirical data convinces me that it's hard enough to encourage men to actually wash their hands in the first place. And frankly, the paper towel is far more versatile than dryers recycling stinky hot air. The main effect of these technogical abominations is to deter and discourage proper hygiene in the course of saving landlords money on stocking and disposing of paper products, and the related unclogging of plumbing fixtures.
Some men eschew drying their hands in their pockets, and will skip washing them to avoid the inevitable. Readers would do better reciting this rant at their dripping hands to see if all of this hot air gets the job done!