I’ve been on the road quite a bit over the past few weeks (one of the reasons blogs have been lacking as many flights have been delayed), and spent countless hours in airports all across the country. It’s made me think a lot about…
…automatic soap.
I feel like I just don’t get it, or rather that I’m somehow doing it wrong. I’m a big advocate of handwashing especially during this cold-and-flu time of year. I wash my hands every time I get off a plane, before I eat, and every time I use the restroom, but I keep on messing up on the automatic soap dispenser.
I either spend minutes in front of it, doing elaborate hand waves rivalry those of a cheap party magician, or I can’t seem to stop having the soap spit out more soap as I rinse my hands. I leave the restroom, knowing that a large pool of wasted soap sits in the abandoned sink. I’d rinse it away, but doing so would only cause more soap to spill out.
I understand the point of an automatic soap dispenser–from what I’ve read, the top of a soap dispenser is one of the grossest parts of any restroom and the sheer quantity of germs and bacteria on the top of it would make anyone sick to their stomach.
But I don’t think the automatic soap dispenser is the right solution–at least not yet.
It makes a simple process a lot more complicated when it doesn’t necessarily need to be.
And we’re guilty of this too…
With all of this technology at our fingertips, we often times neglect the simple solutions instead of those with more technology. I know that a lot of my readers use text more than phone calls to have major discussions with potential boyfriends or girlfriends and then wonder why the other person was confused in that back and forth. We’ll set up elaborate QR codes and online registration forms rather than having someone simply hand us a card with their info on it to enter something into a club database. Again, the technology does work and it is attempting to solve a problem, but is the solution the best it can be right now?
I’ll admit that my website has many forms to fill out and I use email to respond to a lot of potential client needs, but recently I started making phone calls and the questions get answered a little bit quicker and with a little bit more ease. No, I’m not going to abandon all email communication (I know some potential clients like having things in writing to share with others), but I am going to think about if I’m truly helping, or if I’m a little bit like automatic soap.