1. Enter
Try not to touch the door, particularly on the inside. Why? Door handles (for bathrooms and just in general) are the dropping ground for all of the bacteria that people’s hands touch throughout the day. Hopefully the bathroom you’re using pushes open from one side so you can just shoulder or kick the door open on your way in or out. However, if you have to touch the door handle, that’s actually sort of excusable here, just don’t do something stupid like touch your face immediately afterwards. Why might it be okay to touch the door handle?
2. Wash Hands
Yes, wash your hands before you expel your fluids. The reasoning for this makes perfect sense- you’ve shaken hands, touched doorknobs, unclean tables, and a variety of other things that have likely loaded your hand with bacteria before entering the bathroom. Now you’re about to touch your private parts, the one area of your body you definitely don’t want any bacteria or infections.
Washing your hands is not a simple matter of splashing some water and soap on them. Most experts recommend spending at least 20 seconds scrubbing your digits and palms. Really think about that. Count out 20 seconds at the sink- it’ll feel like an eternity but if you’re like me you’ll feel the difference in how clean your hands feel. And really use the soap to scrub your hands. Too often I see people simply gobbing a little soap on their palms and immediately rinsing them off. Work up a lather and make your mommy proud by washing between your fingers, the back of your hands, etc. Even get those wrists clean. Then dry thoroughly with paper towels (hoping they haven’t completely switched to the blower things). You’ll want to turn off the faucet with a paper towel on your hand, since it’s been touched repeatedly by people who just touched their penises (to turn the water on) and then probably didn’t properly wash their hands (turning it off).
After washing, you may want to hang on to one of those paper towels.
3a. Urinal
A lot of the urinal stuff is basic. Don’t stand in a puddle. Don’t touch any part of the urinal. Be aware that the guy next to you might have less than perfect aim.
If there is any noticeable liquid in the urinal when you step up to it, flush it immediately (don’t touch the handle, use the paper towel). If you’re not sure, flush just to be safe. You don’t want to risk your pee splashing the pee of the last user back onto you. If he couldn’t even manage to flush a urinal, who knows where he’s been?
After you pee, flush the urinal with paper towel again (if possible) or, if it’s low enough to the ground, use your foot. If you absolutely have to flush with your hand, realize that your hand is touching an object that countless men have grabbed immediately after holding their dicks. Your hand is now tainted and must be washed immediately.
(Note: if your urinal has one of those auto-flush sensors, you’re probably in luck, but you should still be aware that they do not always work and there may still be urine left in the bowl).
3b. Toilet/Stall
So you need to have a seat. As much as I’d like to discourage going number two in a public restroom, it can be done. Grab a paper towel on your way in, if you can. Use the paper towel to touch the lock as you lock the door, since this lock has been touched by countless people immediately after they had fingers at their asses (as they left the stall). If you have no paper towel, unroll part of the toilet paper, being careful not to touch the first 5-6 inches of it. This part has likely been touched by the previous user and may still have fecal matter on it. Toss this first piece in the toilet and flush (touch the flusher with a “fresh” piece of toilet paper). Use “fresh” TP to lock the door, if you haven’t yet.
Grab a wad of TP and wipe the toilet seat, being very careful to not directly touch any urine, feces, toilet water, etc. Also wipe the front lip of the bowl (if the seat is a horseshoe shape and not a complete oval or circle- most seats are horseshoes) in case your junk or hand at some point makes contact with it. Toss this paper in the bowl, but you don’t have to flush this wad, really.
Now the shocker: I don’t use a toilet seat cover. Sounds crazy, I know, but those things are far more trouble than they’re worth (might soak up urine, fall in toilet, get stuck to your ass, etc.), and really far more risks in a bathroom come from what your hands touch than what your ass touches. Think about it. In a given day, your hands touch your food, your face, your ears, your friends, your coworkers, your desk. Your ass touches… the inside of your pants? Not much risk of disease there. As long as your not sitting in urine or feces, you should be just fine. 20/20 did a study on this a few years ago, and they found virtually no risk in sitting on a toilet seat, and oftentimes those toilet seat covers aren’t all that clean to start with. So sit and shit. Don’t touch the newspapers or magazines someone else has left in there. Wipe thoroughly. Use a wad of TP to unlock the door. Toss it in the bowl as you depart.
4. Wash Hands Part 2
Now, this is the part you’re really doing for everyone else (unless you had to touch that flusher handle). Let’s assume you’re a clean person who takes care of themselves, has no major diseases, doesn’t sweat profusely, etc. (and of course, you’ve read this and been careful not to let bathroom germs get on your hands). If this is the case, going out and shaking hands with the world after touching your junk shouldn’t really pose much of a germ hazard, but it’s polite to wash after you’ve done your business. And always wash before handling food (duh).
As before, work a good lather and wash as if you were scrubbing a dish or removing some imaginary goo from your hands. If you need to wash your face, now would be the time. Turn the water off (again, grab paper towel and use as a “glove”) and dry yourself.
5. Exit
As entering, be careful not to directly touch the door or any of its knobs or handles. Be even more careful now, actually, because everyone who didn’t wash after touching their private areas has touched this side of the door and any handles on it. If you absolutely have to touch the door (no paper towel in bathroom, or whatever) try to touch it high up. You might look silly doing it but it’s likely that very few people (if any) have touched this part of the door. Toss any paper towels in the wastebasket as you exit, or take it with you and dispose of it when you get outside the restroom.
FAQ:
-That seems like it uses a lot of paper towel. Isn’t that bad for the environment?
Answer: Not at all. Paper conservation is completely unnecessary and has been perpetuated by the myth that the U.S. is short on paper. In actuality, U.S. logging has never been more bountiful (thanks technology!) and is hindered mostly by uninformed environmentalists who fight to “save” forests that are replanted at least tenfold in the same area (agricultural advancements!). Also, once you get used to all the bathroom steps, you’ll find yourself able to use paper towels and toilet paper for more than just one “glove” activity.
-Still, isn’t all of that paper towel cluttering up a landfill and depleting resources?
Answer: Wrong again. U.S. landfill space isn’t even close to full, and recycling is really just a wasteful government program that pumps out air pollution (from recycling plants, transportation) while wasting tax money (on separate truck pick-ups, horrible menial jobs, factory upkeep). Also, for everything other than aluminum, it costs more to recycle it than it does to create new products (bad for the economy!). Oh, and glass recycling plants tend to have problems with keeping glass particles out of the air of the surrounding communities (feel free to websearch “glass dust” for info on this). Here’s some real info about recycling, courtesy of Penn & Teller’s Bullsh*t: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1444391672891013193
-All of this procedural stuff seems like it would waste a lot of time, wouldn’t it?
Answer: Not really. You will spend a little more time in the restroom, thoroughly washing your hands and whatnot, but once you follow the steps a few times you’ll coast right through it. It’s like any other routine- once it’s repeated enough, you move through it quickly.
-You seem like a neat freak of Howard Hughes levels of concern. Are you?
Answer: Hardly. One look at my own bathroom will reveal that I’m not a complete slob but I’m nowhere near that neat freak level (of course, I don’t worry about infecting myself with anything in my own, unshared bathroom). I’ve had two colds in three years, and neither lasted particularly long, so I’ve done a pretty good job of avoiding those unnecessary germs.
-Will you be writing step-by-step procedures for other germy places, like commercial airplanes?
Answer: Possibly down the road.
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