MASShole lobbies for john doors to open outwards
BOSTON -- If Bellingham resident Douglas Flavin has his way, all public bathroom doors in Massachusetts will open outward, not inward.The Legislature's Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight reviewed the bill Wednesday. State Rep. James Vallee (D-Franklin) filed the bill on Flavin's behalf.
"[Think] how easy it would be to prevent germs and disease," Flavin's wife Tracy told BostonNow. "If state residents could open bathroom doors with a knee or elbow instead of a handle."
Flavin also claimed it would prevent litter resulting from people protecting their hands with paper towels.
A representative for the state Department of Public Safety told the newspaper that the state building code does not specify the direction public bathroom doors must open.
There are actually people who open stall doors with paper towels?? Look, they have sinks with germicidal soap for a reason, and if you can refrain from picking your nose before you get to the basin, you should be home free. Besides, people's hands are full of germs before they enter the stall, and they'll leave them on the handle of an outward-opening door.
This story leaves more questions than it answers though:
1. What's Flavin's problem? Is he immunocompromised? Is he a doctor or bacteriologist and can show how many illnesses will be prevented? Or is he just a neurotic whiner?
2. Does the bill control new construction only, or must all stall doors be retrofitted to open outwards? And how will the cost of this compare to the cost of the illnesses avoided?
Well, research time...here it is:
HOUSE . . . . . . . No. 3258 By Mr. Vallee of Franklin (by request), petition of Douglas Flavin for legislation to require that doors to public toilets be constructed to open outwards. State Administration and Regulatory Oversight.Chapter 111 of the General Laws is hereby amended by inserting after section 33 the following section:—
Section 33A. The entrance door to all rooms containing toilets or water closets available to the public or to persons engaged in the production or service of food shall open outwards.
That's it. That's all. It's apparently the bathroom owner's job to fix it, but there are no penalties stated for not doing so.
Vallee seems fairly sane, for a politician. He's a military reservist, so he can't be that divorced from reality. I suspect that the way this went down is that Flavin harassed him to the breaking point, so he submitted a lame, badly-written excuse of a bill, figuring that he'd be a laughingstock but that Flavin would be ten times the laughingstock.
My boss' take: "Some people just shouldn't use public restrooms. Is that okay?"
"Well...Depends."
Comments
Posted by: jeffrey smith
Posted on: June 11, 2007 11:32 PM
Ah, my birthplace, don't you love it?
According to the ABC version of the story, Flavin and Vallee are friends and fellow members of the Nat'l Guard; that retrofitting is not required; and Flavin is quoted to the effect that the legislature has wasted its time on far less important things. Which is probably true, no matter how unimportant bathroom doors are.
And the freepers had a cute subtitle to the story: Massachusetts politics in the toilet.
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: June 12, 2007 01:18 PM
Screw the Mexico/US fence; I think we need one on the NH/MA border.
Then it sounds like Vallee was in full complicity. Send him back to war.
Posted by: Heidi Cool
Posted on: June 12, 2007 01:32 PM
This does seem a topic better suited for their Board of Building Standards than the legislature, but oddly enough there are people who not only open stalls with paper towels but external bathroom doors with them as well. I went to the Barking Spider after Parade the Circle this weekend and when I went to leave the loo, I saw someone had left a damp wrinkled paper towel wrapped around the door handle. I thus had to touch this person's used towel to exit. Apparently some lass cared only about her own clean hands and not about the inconvience to others.
I'd never thought of the door direction in terms of health, but when I'm at the airport lugging a small backpack and camera case into the stall with me I often wish the doors opened out. It's a bit tricky to enter and close the door whilst holding so much stuff. That said, I'm not going to call my senator about it.