Attention Men Everywhere....

Guys, I have a bone to pick with you. Something has come up that really gets on my nerves. I will set up the scene for you: There I was, walking into the restroom at work to "play some candy crush" when my usual stall (the big corner handicap stall) was taken, so I had to settle for the 1 ft³ wide stall on the other end. After a few minutes, the other guy stall winds things up, flushes and heads out the door. On the way out, I nearly had my eardrums burst from the trumpeting of this man's flatulence reverberating off the walls of the room, several times. Although this man's anal acoustics were surely a telling sign of his repugnance, they were not what bothered me about this incident. You see, on the way out, while playing me the song of his people (or the song of his dinner last night), this man skipped one extremely crucial step in the very simple process of relieving oneself. This is something we all learned at a very young age, and something that should be so repetitive that it has become muscle memory. The step this man forgot was washing his hands. He left the restroom after dropping a bomb and DID NOT wash his hands. This is unacceptable.

As I was sitting there finishing my business, I naturally started thinking about who it could have been. That's the worst part of it all. It could have just as easily been the guy who stocks the food in the breakroom, or the CEO who shakes hands all day, or the guy who always borrows my pen. It could have been anyone.

Guys, this has to stop. I direct my heated anger towards men only because women don't have nearly the same problem with this and because this is a men's blog. In this article from AARP, it was found that men were 16% less likely than women to wash their hands after using the restroom.  Only 77% of men overall washed their hands, compared to 93% for women. This number of 77% is UP from 66% in 2007, I mean seriously, 66%? That means in 2007, 1 out of every 3 men did not wash their hands after using the restroom. Come on guys. Also from that article, men at a museum in Chicago were 28% more likely to wash their hands than men at a baseball game in Atlanta. Guys just don't wash their hands, probably because they think it's not worth the time and hassle. From another article I found, only 50% of men that do wash their hands actually used soap. Also from that article, only 5% of people (men and women) who did wash their hands scrubbed long enough to actually kill the germs that can cause infections. This is a widespread problem guys, and it has to stop.

Washing your hands is one of the single most effective ways to prevent the spread of illness and infection. Not only that, but think about the microscopic particles that stay on your hands aver spending ten minutes in the bathroom. Even if you only go in to pee, you spend 90 seconds in there, you touch the goods, you still have plenty of those tiny particles all over your hands now. Let's stop this madness and start washing our hands, so the next time I shake hands with someone at work, I don't have to wonder if they are my buddy from a few stalls over the other day, with those putrid hands. Thank you and rant over.