Why Chipper Doesn’t Want to High-Five You
Decatur Metro | September 14, 2010Male Braves fans give renewed meaning to the term “unwashed masses”.
From the New York Times…
The next time a man hands you a hot dog after making a run to the restroom and the concession stand at an Atlanta Braves baseball game, be careful: there is a good chance he did not wash his hands, according to a report released Monday by a group that sends spies into public restrooms in the name of science.
Only about two-thirds of the men observed washed their hands after using the restroom at Turner Field — the lowest rate for any of the locations cited in the observational study and survey on the hand-washing habits of Americans.
So now there’s no reason to continue washing your hands.
It’s not just at baseball games. It’s also common at pubs and sports bars — there’s some unspoken rule that, if you’re drinking beer and watching sports, you don’t have to wash hands after using the restroom. Weird, macho stuff.
When I went to Paris last year, I enjoyed seeing the unisex sinks in between the closed toilet closets in some restaurants and bars. That way you could clearly see who washed hands and who didn’t. Not a bad idea.
I took a persuasion class in business school and we read that in the presence of a single other person the likelihood that someone will wash their hands increases to 80%. Without the other person present it drops down to below 50%. Social pressure must not work at The Ted, especially after 6 innings in the Chop House – go figure!
i’m for the unisex sinks. positive peer pressure.
Last time I checked, I shower every day and my Diddy taught me how not to pee on my hands.
Really? Would you like to announce that to your table in a restaurant? See how well that goes over…
I thought we were talking about Turner Field?
So how do you manage to pee without touching your equipment?
Washing your hands after you use the bathroom seems like a no brainer to me.
If you knew how many nasty bugs are out there just waiting for an opportunity to find a weak person, a cut in your hand or mouth, take hold and start an infection….
I’m truly not surprised. I’m appalled at how many people use the restroom and stride out without a glance at the sink.
Ew. Just . . . ew.
At our office, we share a women’s bathroom with other office suites and our staff was appalled at how many women (from other offices, of course) didn’t wash their hands. I made a sign with the follow text and taped it to the back of the door.
“if you choose not to wash your hands, please avoid contaminating others by placing a towel between your dirty little hand and this handle.”
No idea if this helped improve adoption of hand washing but no one took the sign down for about a month.
Another perplexing ladies’ room activity: several women make it a practice to talk on their cell phones in the bathroom. In the stall. How could one need to talk to someone so urgently that you couldn’t ask to call them back in say, 2 minutes? I always make a point of flushing the toilet while they’re talking.
EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!! Boys can be so GROSS.
Women are more disgusting… many of them “hover” over the toilet seat and leave it covered in pee. THAT’s gross. I always figure my hand-washing is pretty much negated by touching the door handle on the way out!
I agree that women can be gross, too, but if you think they’re “more disgusting”, you obviously haven’t seen the inside of a men’s room lately (yes, I have, but through no fault of my own)!
They should have also measured the number of guys who refuse to flush the public toilet afterwards too. That number would be pretty low too.