I just witnessed what is perhaps one of the most amazing technological advances of our time: The Sani-Seat. Last Monday I was privileged to have a four-hour layover at the Chicago airport. After making my way from terminal 2 to terminal 3 I still had an hour to wait so I decided to check out the bathroom facilities.
The first stall I entered had a seat covered with plastic and a weird machine towards the back. I thought I had mistakenly gone into the handicapped stall but I checked another stall and it too had a plastic covered seat and machine. So I took closer look and realized it was an automatic-seat-cover-changer-machine, a.k.a. the Sani-Seat. It is a machine that automatically changes the toilet seat cover so you don’t have to. No more wrestling with the awkward-round-tissue-paper seat covers, just a quick wave of the hand in front of a sensor and the machine shifts the plastic replacing the old cover with a new one. I am sure this device is the only thing that stood between me some dangerous disease spread through the fecal oral route. Not that I was in much danger because I wash my hands incessantly.
9 comments:
Wow, did you fall in? That looks like a huge hole. I just have to wonder what the person the next stall over thought when they saw the camera flash emanating from your stall. I hope you kept your feet firmly planted beneath you.
It's a pity that I didn't have the emotional capacity to appreciate this modern wonder during my own layover. I should be grateful for those seat covers. My travel nightmare could have concluded with some hideous disease acquired in a Chicago airport bathroom stall.
Fecal oral route? Nasty. I'm glad you were spared any germ transfers!
I am wondering how washing your hands incessantly and contracting a disease via your "fecal oral route" (really, is that what is called) are related?
Ah yes I am familiar with these. The only issue arises when the motion sensor goes off at an inopportune time. Very uncomfortable to say nothing of the alarm it can cause.
Kirsten it is apparent you know little about disease transmission. Fecal-oral transmission is very common. Take cholera for example. Someone ingests contaminated water (fecal-oral). Or someone uses the bathroom, doesn't wash their hands and then prepares food. Happens all the time.
Right, not that ignorant. Obviously misunderstood what you wrote.
ew! I hated the sani seat in Chicago! Maybe I don't know how it works, but I too had a layover when I briefed the lovely city for a day of business meetings. It kind of creeped me out, I think I squatted to be honest, not daring to cheek it. How many times does that thing go around? How do you know you are really getting a section that has never yet before been cheeked?
I agree with TroyandNat. Can you really trust that machine to effectively sanitize every time over time? I always put down a layer or two of TP just in case.
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