I have to use this trash can every work day. The only other alternative is to not wash my hands, which I’ve never done, though I see others sneak by on occasion. I haven’t measured the distance from the floor, but I’d guess about two and a half feet at best. Every time I use the paper towel dispenser and trash, I have to bend down like I’m petting a small dog.
This doesn’t make sense. It was built for children. Everyone has to bend down each time they throw away a paper towel. There is often a paper towel on the ground from someone who missed the trash and didn’t have the endurance to punch it through the hoop again.
At a start-up I used to work at, there were black trash bags taking up half of the refrigerator. They sat in there for months. Finally I asked other employees whose they were. No one knew. I opened the trash bags and found paint rollers. These were left by a temp office assistant who spent two days painting walls and now hadn’t worked there in months.
Later on there was a paper bag by the door. It sat there for months until someone eventually asked what it was doing there and no one knew. It was just filled with someones garbage.
Nothing is a good option forever. Everything depends on context and current conditions. You don’t keep wearing a winter jacket into summer because that’s what you did every day for the last four months.
And this is how much of life is. A lot of things in place and no knows their purpose.
Because it isn’t normal to question things. As a kid it is. Very young kids question everything. Why? Why? Why? Then school happens. After school sets in it becomes normal to coast. To just accept the world as it is instead of molding it into something better. If you continually question the purpose of things and discover that there isn’t one, then the burden can easily fall on you to fix it. And who wants more responsibility?
This is why an entire office building has to deal with two and a half foot tall trash cans.
skmurphy says
Thought provoking post. One other explanation for the bathroom trash can height is that it’s designed for someone in a wheelchair. The examples you cite are for common areas that no one feels ownership of. Other offices where I have worked avoided things piling up by appointing a (rotating) owner for a common area: e.g. the refrigerator must be cleaned out every other weekend. But your underlying points are a good one, inertia from random decisions can accumulate into debris and wasted effort.
Ben Nesvig says
That’s a logical guess, though both of the stalls seem like they couldn’t fit a standard wheel chair.
-J says
The low-flying trash panels were installed by the same persons who put toilet paper roll dispensers immediately in the way of my knee while using the can. Solving your problem involves a reciprocating saw to expand the opening. How to make people think sufficiently to realize they’re locating the toilet paper in a stupid location is another challenge.