Much Aloo About Something

There were bits of it everywhere on the floor. Bits here, bits there. There always is.  Every day. There always has been.  For years it’s been like this. 

And still they haven’t figured it out.  Figured out that trying to economise on the most essential pieces of equipment for human use usually ends up being the stupidest piece of enonomising.

And it gets on my wick.

Not that much gets on my wick.

Last month, for instance, the only thing that got on my wick, and still does (and always will), are all those people who just have to have the last word – those who know-it-all – who can’t butt out of a conversation without putting their ‘wick’ into it.  We have a lot of them around us.  They get on my wick.

This month that which is getting on my wick is those damn bits on the floor, everywhere.

Bits of loo paper that is.

Over the past decade it seems that commercial businesses have come up with ideas about how they can cut costs to the bare (literally) minimum – by cutting costs on loo paper.

Don’t you notice it?  All these public and commercial loos that have either:

1)  Jolly great big tinny-plastic-roundy-oval fixtures on the wall next to the loo and somewhere inside them are ginormous rolls of loo paper for the general public to use when doing necessary functory functions.  These inside rolls of loo paper are affixed to a central pivot point which, in theory, is supposed to allow the ginormous roll of paper to roll.

But it doesn’t.  It jams itself rigid onto this spiral pivot and the roll of paper is so heavy that it just does not turn.

This in turn means that when requiring the necessary paper to allow one to complete one’s purpose for sitting on this lavatory, one is then sentenced to the purgatory of spending more time planted on the loo seat trying to extricate a decent amount of paper to complete the task.

But can’t.

Because the damn ginormous roll of paper will not roll – which explains the reason why there are already an array of pieces of paper spread around the toilet floor where all those previously frustrated poor souls have been desperately contorting their arms to reach up into this giant cylinder to somehow unrolls that spool of paper to get the bare amount of required equipment to finish the task off.  And all they get is tiny pieces that rip off in their fingers – smaller than a postage stamp.  They get dropped on the floor.  Scores of them.

Then – when one does finally get 4 cm of the white stuff in the hand – one finds that economizing also runs into the thickness of the damn stuff.  You find that the loo paper has the thickness equaled to half the density of tissue paper.  And therein lays the next problem.

One has to then contort oneself further up the big tinny-plastic wall fixture with one arm, while, with the other arm trying to extricate another 4cm of the stuff just to have a band aid  size piece of paper to pretend to finish the task.

    2) Or- if it is not one of the great big tinny-plastic-roundy-oval dispenser, one finds the loo has the alternative dispenser - those rectangular see through boxes screwed to the wall which allows one to see regular rolls of loo paper stacked inside them on the other side of the see through plastic, on top of one another.  The theory of these loo paper dispensers is that the usual domestic style roll will dispense itself with one little tug of the end of the paper and then roll easily toward you and allow you to gather sufficient quantities of the required material to complete your task.

Not.

Inevitably these dispensers have:

i)             Had some pillock who refills them stuff so many loo rolls in the dispenser that the whole pile of them are jammed down and immovable.

ii)            Had some pillock who refills them stuff the jolly rolls in the dispenser backwards, so they effectively roll toward the wall.  Try pulling some of that paper out from that.

iii)          Had some pillock who has got frustrated at trying to get paper out and finding it won’t, break the lid on the top of the dispenser and use the first available roll on the stack.

Consequences of either of the 3 above means there are bits of loo paper all over the floor around the porcelain.

    3) But wait!  There’s more!  

    There are those tissue-box like dispensers, screwed to the wall, that have those stupid square boxes of paper that feels like it’s made out of recycled gum leaves and plastic buckets.  I guess the purpose of installing this type of paper is the hope that no one wants to rub their private parts with crinkly-gum-plastic-like paper so will therefore use less. 

They probably do, but in their frustrated efforts of pulling these crinkly sheets out of the box there is an inevitable 2 or 3 further sheets that come out with them and end up on the floor. That’s great economy.

Come on now, doesn’t all that get on your wick too?

It doesn’t?  You think I am irrational?  Well then.  Think about this:

Whenever I go into the loos with these stupid, uneconomical loo-paper dispensers, it is no wonder I  then loath leaving the loo after all that time of contortionist practise.  Because  I know the only way out is to put my hand on the door latches to allow myself out.  The same latches that have already been opened by dozens of others who have gone before me, and how many of them would have actually spent the time acquiring the correctly, socially conscious amount of loo paper to do their private task effectively?  Very few.  After all, in this particular loo that I was in today, they are all gym bunnies who are rushing off to the class they are late for – they don’t have time to contort, twist and hope, and then ponder scrunching or folding, from front to back or back to front – they just want to get to their class.  They’re in a rush.

Come on now, doesn't all that get on your wick too?