Restroom Attendants

Those primitive towel holder types that lamely hang on the wall cradling towels on its racks have been tossed to obsolescence. Apparently, its utility was far too deficient when measured against its expected function. In a bid to address this pressing issue, the latest design in tower holders breathes, moves, talks and--its most malignant defect--expects tips.

I noticed that pseudo-upscale restaurants are often guilty of installing such modern fixtures in their restrooms. If they think that by requiring their patrons to pay a fee in exchange of their hands getting a maximum of 4 second devoted attention from a possessed towel they are providing superior service, then they are monumentally and exasperatingly wrong. It does not add to the restaurant experience to have a towel holder leer menacingly at you upon its suspicion that you are a no-tipper.

What it actually does is cause an anxiety on the stubborn and miserly patrons who refuse to mollycoddle this panhandling innovation. They will evade the restroom at all costs, no matter how dire the situation. They will go through the meal without the necessary ablutions thus risking contaminating the food they eat. They will ignore all calls of nature, regardless of how relentless the call is. Because the price to be civilized is higher than the meal itself.

Consider how many times a restaurant patron pops in the loo. The responsible ones would stop by the restroom before eating to wash hands, in the middle to relieve self, some time after to wash hands after handling the lobster and at the end to cleanly punctuate the meal experience. Women develop sudden love affairs with the restroom, visiting it every so often during the meal and often in a tour-group with all the women at the table. Men, because of the religious pilgrimage of the women to the loo, are pressured to visit the loo at least once.

There should not be any money made in visiting the loo of a restaurant and subjecting patrons to a sorrowful spectacle of their money going down the drain. After all, that is what filing taxes are for.