Thursday, February 12, 2009
Piss on it!
I ask you: How difficult is it to manufacture a proper urinal?
Apparently, pretty damn difficult if you're the Crane Plumbing company.
Long-time readers (are there any of you left?) may recall that I once had a dream to write a book about urinal etiquette and trivia, so over the years I've kept an eye out for urinal details. I can tell you without hesitation that Crane makes the worst urinals going.
Their biggest problem lies in the sheer sloppiness of their design. The inferior hydro-mechanics of Crane models leads to frequent splash-back problems. This produces a fine urine mist whose are effects are (usually) invisible but which causes an especially nasty damp sensation on the trousers.
On the other hand, American Standard: now, there's a fine urinating experience for you. I don't know what it is - I'm not an engineer - but something about the subtle fold-back ridges running along the edges of American Standards seems to act like a magic force field preventing all splash-back. While Cranes often leave you feeling sullied, American Standards consistently deliver that refreshed feeling that one expects from using a well-designed urinal.
The worst part about this is that there probably isn't much accountability. I don't expect that Crane gets many letters telling them "Your urinals suck!", and even if they did they probably wouldn't take them seriously. Do they have any sort of customer satisfaction metrics? Do they do any sort of focus testing for new models? Have they even made a new model since the '50s? I seriously doubt it.
At work, they just switched from American Standard to Crane, so this is all top-of-mind for me at the moment.
posted by Mentok @ 2:14 p.m.,
3 Comments:
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At 5:13 p.m.,
said...
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gee whiz, i wish i had something witty to say . . .
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At 3:20 p.m.,
Rachel said...
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hehe i found this entire post amusing. you should write a letter... i would write one but i have girl parts. :-)
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At 11:03 a.m.,
said...
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Now I gotta see what we have here, and try not to mist on myself.
