Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Touching Toilets

Today I heard about some strange training that all the teachers at my school will participate in. It seems some company president will give a speech and then a demonstration later on in the day about how to clean toilets without using gloves or brushes.

He teaches a direct contact approach to cleaning toilets, urinals, and bathrooms. Now I normally would have just laughed this off as a joke, but when I tried doing that one of the teachers started showing me the document they received from our principal.

The president of some famous Japanese company will come and give a speech and then he will take everyone to a lavatory at our school, and demonstrate the process. They really don't use rubber gloves, nor any brushes to clean the toilet. From what I understand he actually touches the toilet surfaces with his bare hands. This has got to be a Japanese original.

I personally think this is very unsanitary and disgusting. I mentioned it to several teachers in the teachers room about contracting STDs like AIDS and herpes or HPV from direct contact with toilets. I also mentioned bacteria, germs and viruses that you might get from the surface of a toilet or urinal. Most of the teachers seemed to agree with me, but they said they had to attend the meeting as it was required. Although one teacher said she was abstaining from the demonstration portion of the training.

What is going on with these people? Who the hell advocates touching toilet surfaces with your bare hands? This goes against all common sense regardless of culture. This is a question of sanitation, not mores or norms of a society.

I was very shocked and somewhat baffled as to why they would do this.... I am still scratching my head.

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