The Germs Have It?

By Jody Worsham

All rights reserved for a little common sense.

Maybe because it is late at night and my brain is only hearing half of the television commercials or, which is more likely, the commercials really are that dumb. My subconscious has been subjected to ads for giant cupcake pans, Eggies for boiling eggs without the shell provided you can still find all the parts, and pajama blue jeans which only look good on those physically fit who wear a size two.

The ultimate dumbest commercial to date, just slightly ahead of the Eggies, is the hands free soap dispenser. Now granted, a hands free touch faucet makes sense. If your hands are really dirty, then touching the faucet with your elbow, your nose, or your big toe if you are into yoga or Pilates makes sense. Even a hands free paper towel dispenser would protect your clean hands, especially if the previous person touching the paper towel dispenser lever did not do a good job of washing his/her hands, but a hands free soap dispenser?!

The advertisement touts "prevents the spread of germs." Ok, now you are getting soap to wash the germs off your hands, right? So washing a few extra germs picked up from the soap dispenser isn't going to break the germicidal bank. Plus, is the soap dispenser suddenly going to shower the room with germ spores? Are the germs congregating just south of the dispenser mechanism waiting to make a gigantic jump through the air? If the soap in the hands free soap dispenser cannot fight off the germs left by the hands the soap is supposed to clean, then it isn't going to make any difference if the soap dispenser is hands free or not. Besides, who is going to touch the soap dispenser and NOT wash their hands?

Better that germ fearing inventors turn their efforts toward inventing a hands free toothpaste dispenser. Now there's a germ laden object just waiting to explode. Think about it. Multiple hands touching the tube, (why am I the only one with toothpaste in the house) then tossing it on various counters that may or may not have been the semi-final resting place for pet frogs, worms, and gold fish? Hands griping the twisted distorted tube, squirting crusted semi-dried goo onto a toothbrush, then said hand and brush going to your mouth. Bleeegh!

Put toothpaste in those individual packets like catsup or put toothpaste in your hands free soap dispenser. At least that would make sense.

If, however, you are one of the millions who bought the hands free soap dispenser you can just toss it in the drawer with the missing eggie parts when the batteries run down. Your hands can still get clean with old fashioned soap-on-a-rope.