I must admit that I am somewhat of a germ-a-phobe. All the years that I’ve worked in the restaurant business has made me so. I’m particularly wary about using public restrooms, simply because I’ve seen how bad they can get. I used to manage a restaurant that was right next door to a very large amusement park. We were very busy in the summertime, sometimes getting as many as six busloads of tourists at a time. For some reason when the restaurant was built, they only put in one male and one female restroom and there was only one stall in the women’s and one stall and one urinal in the men’s.
This resulted in long lines of frustrated people trying to get into the restrooms. And because it was almost impossible to get through the crowds to clean them, most of the time they were greeted with a huge mess when they got in there. To make matters worse, kids would vandalize them at least twice a day. You’d go in to see that whole rolls of toilet paper had been stuffed into the toilet and the sink had been stopped up and the water faucets turned on full blast. One time someone even took a dump in the men’s urinal. I don’t know how they even maneuvered into position, but to this day, cleaning it up was one of the most disgusting things that I’ve done in my life.
And we’ve all encountered disgusting public restrooms. Where you really have to go and have no other choice. You put down about five layers of toilet paper on the seat even before you can sit down and then you notice that the person in front of you didn’t flush so you flush the toilet and find out the reason why when the filthy brown water starts to overflow.
According to CNN, (www.cnn.com), the dangers of getting sick from using a public restroom are somewhat overrated. As a matter of fact, one expert, Charles Gerba, a microbiologist from the University of Arizona, says that the toilet seat is probably the cleanest part of the restroom.
And now the Internet can help you find the cleanest public restroom nearest you. Sites like MizPee will point you to the nearest public restroom and show you extensive comments about how clean they are. There are also other sites like Diaroogle that cater to specific cities like New York and San Francisco. You can even have this information delivered to your mobile phone. Users of MizPee rate the restrooms on a scale of one to five toilet paper rolls and nominate the best and the worst for Flush of the Year awards.
Dirty restrooms have been found to contain E-coli, salmonella, coliform, rotavirus, and even the potentially deadly form of staph known as MRSA. But most of the time people pick these germs up with their hands and not their rear ends. Even accidentally sitting in some urine left on the toilet seat is no big deal, but not washing your hands after using the restroom may result in an infection.
Here are a few tips that the experts recommend so you don’t walk away with some unwanted germs:
Wash your hands for at least 20 seconds or longer, if possible.
Don’t touch the bathroom floor. It’s probably the dirtiest part of the restroom.
The floor, the outside of the sanitary napkin disposal and the sink and water taps are the dirtiest.
One study found that one-third of women’s purses has fecal bacteria on the bottom of them. Try not to set your purse on the restroom floor.
Avoid the middle stall. It’s usually the dirtiest because it is used the most. The first stall is probably the cleanest.
And finally, the dirtiest restrooms are usually found in airports and on planes and the cleanest ones are usually found in hospitals.
