I believe I’ve made my views known before regarding people with OCD-like tendencies about cleanliness. The short version is: they’re freaks. The slightly longer version is you can be arguably correct about a topic (e.g. many surfaces are covered in germs) and still be a weirdo freak about it.
I bring this up because someone at work has seen fit to put up a sign in the toilets about washing your hands. To call the instructions “a little elaborate” is on par with calling the ocean “a little bit wet”. I could understand having detailed hand-washing instructions at a “special needs” school but do adults really need six illustrations to show them how to do it?
I think I know who put the sign there. I suspect it’s the guy who not only obsessively washes his hands (I usually see him doing it about eight times a day) but who actually wears gloves all day so his skin doesn’t touch any surfaces. Besides having six illustrations showing you how to complete such onerous tasks as put water on your hands, the sign also has these suggestions of when to wash your hands:
Before eating
I know this one gets mentioned pretty widely but I honestly never do this unless my hands are actually dirty. And by dirty I mean “have dirt on them” rather than being covered in untold legions of invisible microbes. I wash my hands before preparing food but not before eating it.
After going to the toilet. Some people wash their hands both before and after.
Yes. Those people are called freaks.
After touching dirt or any other substance.
What the fuck does this even mean? Isn’t everything a “substance”? When I see Mr OCD washing his hands continually it leads me to believe he takes this quite literally.
After coming into contact with any surface that might have germs.
Ha! That’s open slather for the OCD crew! EVERYTHING has germs on it, just ask them. And yes, you could test swabs from pretty much any non-sterile environment and they would reveal germs. But so fucking what? Humanity has survived for millennia without bathing everything in antiseptic. Besides which, there are studies suggesting that this explosion of anti-bacterial cleansing is doing nothing more than breeding super bugs.
I’m tempted to let things run their course and eventually have the anti-germ nazis killed by their own obsessions. But the bastards are taking us with them. I say, purely in the name of self-preservation, we kill all the clean freaks.
It’s us or them.
Angry 365 Days a Year 
In the spirit of truth and honesty, I’m one of those people who’s got OCD-like tendencies about cleanliness, but, in my defense, at least I’ve stopped carrying the bottle of Germ-x in my purse.
Well… not quite. I just carry a smaller bottle. :]
I don’t mind people who actually have OCD, they’re just crazy people, and you can’t blame people for being crazy.
But the rest of them should chill the fuck out. You have an immune system for a reason. Also, obsessively avoiding any infection means that your immune system doesn’t get the exercise it needs, and is the immune system equivalent of the dorky guy in glasses on Mr. Muscle adverts. (Apologies if this is a cultural reference too far for many.)
You’ll also find that the human body carries a shitload (literally, in many cases) of bacteria and other pathogens around inside it at all times. You gonna give yourselves a bleach enema every day?
Sounds like someone’s been watching A Current Affair too much, really. Or that other crap, what’s it called? “What’s good for you”? ‘Cause one of them ran something, relatively recently, regarding the germs that you find on keyboards and mice.
All I can say about that is, “consider yourself lucky if you’ve never used a computer in a computer science course at uni.” Not only are they crawling with the disease du jour, they’re visibly greasy and just a general mess.
Also, the same program ran something else, which might have sparked the sign, about the crud found under fingernails and how you need to wash your hands properly.
As if you didn’t know how to do that already…
But bleach enemas? That sounds fun! Me first!
Katie: one step at a time 🙂
Massif: yeah, the germ freaks are actually doing themselves harm
Medivh: I’ll take your word about ACA, I certainly don’t watch it. And I was worried Massif might be starting something with bleach enemas…
Pingback: The Ryno Pen » Another Squick In The Wall
Don’t you just love the germ freaks that use the paper towel to open the door when they leave the bathroom but are so trifling that they throw the paper towel behind the door making the “crapper” a “real crapper.”
marr: this workplace’s ultimate clean freak does that exact thing!
> but do adults really need six illustrations to show them how to do it?
No, they don’t, because it won’t help. All they need is a big bright sign with “Wash your f*ckin’ hands if you tend to piss your palm and handshakes are common in your country!” And a shovel-yielding gorilla nearby, trained to hit their heads if they’re not following. No, better chop their pissed hands off, so they could do no more handshakes!
Whoa, wait a second. People open loo doors with a paper towel and then throw said towel back into the loo?
I suddenly know the answer to a question that was bugging me the whole of last year. Pity I don’t work there anymore; I can’t track down the culprit and spray them with water, but claim it’s urine.
That’d be an awesome way to get sacked… *grins evil-ly*
Vlad: I like the direct approach
Medivh: If you make sure there’s no witnesses, you’d be fine. They’d be too traumatised to tell anyone about it.