Music and culture in chart form. Can you explain music and culture in charts?

Make your own using our Graph Builder or upload your own files, images or videos. All our charts are user-submitted.

 

« Previous | Next »

How People Wash Hands After Using Public Restroom


song chart memes

Graph by Chris McAdams

Incorrect source or offensive?

Add this to your blog:
(Copy & paste code)

» 74 TPS Reports

  1. Operator says:

    It’s all a question of hygiene…

    • yup says:

      and the horrible way non-home restroom soap makes your hands smell for the rest of the day

      • Kevin T. says:

        Depends on the dispenser.

        There’s the blue foam dispensers. They don’t really smell like anything, but (as with most “unscented” things), if you put your hand right to your nose and take a REALLY deep breath, you can smell the soap, and it doesn’t smell very good.

        Then there’s the other, liquid soap. In one of the restrooms with liquid soap, it smells, and it smells A LOT. I’m not talking a bad smell, it’s a good smell, but it’s too much. Ten minutes after using it you can smell it wafting up to your nose, and a half hour after using that soap, you can still smell it on your hands.

        I prefer the ones that’s mostly unscented better, because it doesn’t leave a very strong smell.

  2. Kit says:

    This chart should come right after the hygiene chart that compares children, normal dudes, doctors and his roommate. And I’m unfortunately inclined to agree. Even if I only enter the stall to change clothes, I STILL feel I must wash my hands.

  3. AnaDemeter says:

    My husband does that! He goes into this big, long speech about how his d*ck is clean, he doesn’t pee on his hands, and anyway if he did urine is a steriliser…. I just consider the level of cleanliness of most public toilets and that’s enough to make me scrub up!

  4. xorsyst says:

    In a public toilet you don’t need to scrub your hands with warm water – you just get them wet enough so that the dirt comes off on the paper towels. It’s a different story if using a towel at home though.

  5. brinnann says:

    I’m definitely in the tenth percentile. Actually, it’s more likely that I wash my hands for more than 20 seconds. Just stepping into a public restroom makes me feel icky.

    • brinnann says:

      Oh, and if there’s no soap…well, that’s why I keep handi-wipes in my purse.

      • faetal says:

        Bath & Body Works White Tea and Ginger hand sanitizer… I’ve been through some pretty nas-tay rest stops. I’m the 20 second “Alphabet song” scrubber and then sanitizer in the car girl… Whats the deal with some of those sinks being ice water/no soap/ and the bacon dispenser rather than towels… ew ew ew

        • curia says:

          And then there was this time I was in Southern Illinois, a woman was cleaning out a bed pan in the restroom sink at a public rest area…

    • Levi F. says:

      Is OCD really the 10th percentile?

      • Kevin T. says:

        I’d say that’s pretty accurate. Then about a quarter of people have the right amount of cleanliness (washing quickly, with soap), while the remaining have various degrees of insufficient cleanliness, from just using water down to rubbing the crotch before leaving.

  6. tgladden says:

    I have to say that in a public rest room I touch nothing but my own body. I generally don’t flush the urinal because it’s disgusting. I know my body is clean as I shower twice a day… who knows what the hell is on that flush handle!

  7. Destin says:

    You’re a germaphobe. I don’t want my hands because I’m not superstitious like you. DIAF, plox.

  8. Nate says:

    Why is no one concerned about this 33% of the population using Holy water to wash their hands? Who are these people?

    • 3ntropy says:

      the holy water is just a gesture for whoever else is in the bathroom to see you do it.

    • Calins says:

      Do you really wanna know?
      Think about that long and hard

    • John says:

      The pope

    • Asday says:

      “Holy water” is in quotes for a reason. Water, no soap. The observer believes the washers believe the water is holy and cleansing, and soap is un-needed, whereas the washer can’t be arsed, and is rinsing merely for the pleasure of the observer who would otherwise think them unhygienic.

  9. 3ntropy says:

    they should have sterilizing wipes as you leave the restroom instead of a dirty flush handle, a dirty faucette lever, a dirty paper towel knob, and a dirty door handle. Even with the sensor activated stuff, cause i hate those damn computer thingamajigs.

  10. Candystripe Legs says:

    I don’t know how long I take, ever since I was a kid I just sing “Happy Birthday” and stop when the songs over ^_^

  11. Yarcofin says:

    Hey, if I’m willing to urinate and then eat food without washing my hands, other people shouldn’t have a problem with it either.

    I almost always do the “holy water” approach to washing my hands. If I have something sticky or greasy on my fingers I’ll put soap between them and rub them together under water for 3 seconds, that’s enough to get the job done.

    Not washing my hands = better immune system. I can’t remember the last time I was sick.

    Besides, I heard that rubbing your hands on the towel removes like 90% more dirt/germs than the actual washing.

    • 3ntropy says:

      don’t mind mr. ocd down there. i’m in the same boat as you. what they don’t know can’t hurt em.

      • RJ says:

        Ummm…what? The silliest, most puerile arguments show up here. What I don’t know? I DO know…moron. I said that I knew and so I bump fists. And the scientific “Not washing hands = better immune system” based on his sample of one is beyond moronic. I guess doctors should never wash their hands, then there will be no more infections at hospitals. How old are you? 8?

        • 3ntropy says:

          hospitals are chok full of aweful bacteria and viruses. please don’t tell me you think they are healthy and sterile. as for the moron and child insults…you’re on the internet, mr. crotchwaffle, get used to unsubstantiated facts and silly opinions.

          the humANity.

        • Tee hee says:

          I can’t help be amused by germaphobes. So much wasted time and energy.

          Hospitals are filled with actual diseases, and doctors put their hands in places much more sensitive than your hands. Normal people don’t come into contact with anything that’s the least bit dangerous.

          You could lick the floor of a public bathroom and not even get the sniffles. At least you could if you actually had an immune system.

        • cordon says:

          “Antibacterial Cleasers Can Hurt Immune System
          Researchers Say Antibacterial Cleansers Hurt Immune Systems
          July 17

          Repeated use of popular antibacterial soaps on children might actually contribute to the development of chronic diseases, according to Tufts University microbiologist Dr. Stuart Levy, who spoke today at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases in Atlanta… In fact, the efforts of humans to keep their bodies and the things they touch bacteria-free are misguided, Levy says. “The vast majority of bacteria are out there serving a purpose for us. Helping our intestinal track mature, helping our immune system mature.”

          His theory is part of what is called “The Hygiene Hypothesis.” It states that when young children do not get enough exposure to bacteria, some scientists suspect the immune system can overreact to pollen or dust, or other ordinarily harmless substances. And that, scientists say, may be the reason for the rapidly rising rates of asthma and allergy.

          “The Hygiene Hypothesis is all about killing the good bugs that we need to stimulate our immune systems in our body and provide competition with the bad bugs,” says Professor Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota.

          “Dousing everything we touch with antibacterial soaps and taking antibiotic medications at the first sign of a cold can upset the natural balance of microorganisms in and around us, leaving behind only the ‘superbugs,’” Levy says.”

          You germophobe. Go see a psychiatrist.

      • Kevin T. says:

        “what they don’t know can’t hurt em.”

        Because, you know, before germs were discovered, no one ever got sick. :-/

    • lololollllllllololololoolloolollol says:

      Damn girl. Remind me to scratch my moist nuts and wipe it right under your nose.

    • fubuki says:

      By this logic, washing your hands with urine = even better immune system. So you better get on that. And stay away from me.

  12. Yarcofin says:

    You turn the tap on with your dirty hands.
    Wash your hands until clean.
    Touch dirty tap again to turn it off, defeating the purpose.

    So unless you turn the tap off with paper towels, it’s useless anyway.

    • brinnann says:

      I do that – the turning off with paper towels thing. I also open the door with one. If there’s just a hand blower, I use the back of my hand where it’s least likely to touch anything else, then my pinky at the very tip-top of the door handle.

    • Kevin T. says:

      On your hands, most of the bacteria reside stuck to your skin with your skin’s oils. When you use soap, it emulsifies the oil and water, removing oils from your skin, and thus taking bacteria away with it. That’s why, if you just use water, it’s not really getting rid of the pathogens (and antibacterial soap isn’t that important, because it’s really soap’s chemical emulsification process that allows pathogens to physically get washed away, even if they don’t die in the process).

      So, say you start out with your hands 100% dirty. You wash, and remove, let’s say, 95% of the bacteria and viruses on your hands, making them virtually sterile. Then, you briefly touch the faucit handle and door knob, getting a few more germs back on. By that point, you probably have about 15% of the number of bacteria and viruses on your hands as you did before you washed. So though it does replace a few, the act of washing removes far more things from your hands than is replaced when you leave.

  13. Lola says:

    Should be a graph that depicts the likelihood of someone washing their hands increasing when someone else is in the bathroom to observe them.

    • Kevin T. says:

      Slightly true. After a guy peed (and didn’t flush) he then stood by the mirror to check his hair. I mentioned that he should probably wash his hands, after which he proceeded to pump the soap dispenser like a dozen times before washing his hands. If he’s using that much soap, no wonder he doesn’t wash his hands. Anyway, I doubt I made a difference, and he probably still never washes his hands.

  14. anon says:

    99% of women practice good hygiene in the washroom
    99% of men do not pee on their hands.

  15. Mac says:

    A question I always have regarding the need to wash after urinating is this…if my penis is so “dirty” that I must wash, then why do people perform oral sex without giving a thought to whether the organ is “clean”. I have never had a woman stop and say that she must use a hand wipe on either herself or me prior to engaging in the act. If I am clean enough for her to put it in her mouth, then why should I was my hands after touching it? I work in a hospital and do wash my hands before touching it as I don’t want to get it infected with any germs.

    • fubuki says:

      Would you stick your wanger in any random stranger’s mouth? Wait, don’t answer that.

    • RJ says:

      That is a spurious argument. I am talking about me not wanting to touch your wanker spunge.

    • Xian says:

      I think the amount of people who don’t wash is higher.

      As for why you should wash, it’s a common misconception that folks are worried about the urine. Urine is sterile. Speaking for myself, it’s the junk sweat that bothers me most. The bathroom germs are secondary. Imagine this: I go to a bar after a long day’s work. Twig and berries well marinated in crotch sweat. Using the bathroom, I handle my sweaty equipment, and don’t bother to wash – I didn’t pee on my hand. I come out of the bathroom and meet a buddy of mine. We shake hands. The same hand that just handled my sweaty junk is now rubbing against my friend’s hand. My friend has no intention of going down on me, nor does he expect to get my ball sweat on his hand.

      That’s the thing. It’s a common courtesy you do for strangers (and your friends). Sure, the girl going down on you isn’t too worried – assuming it’s not too stank down there – and why would she be? By the time she’s down there, you probably already swapped spit with her – hygene isn’t exactly the first thing on her mind – or yours! Otherwise you might give put much through into how close the “V” is to the “A”!

      • fubuki says:

        “Otherwise you might give put much through into”

        I was going to say my head just exploded, but if that had actually happened, I would have typed a sentence like yours.

      • Kevin T. says:

        But oh noes! Taking 5 seconds to put some soap and run some water on your hands is too much for the quick, manly man on the go! :-P

  16. Dwight says:

    Fact: If I wash my hands, I take the risk of weakening my immune system, thus making it easier for me to die from airborn diseases. You would want that, wouldn’t you.

    • Kevin T. says:

      AIDS weakens your immune system. Being clean doesn’t. If it did, Africa and Middle Ages Europe would have been the cleanest, most disease-free places in the world.

      Your body can’t get strengthened by coming into contact with pathogens it’s never encountered before. And my not washing your hands, your making your body come into contact with more pathogens, some of which it has never come in contact with and it wouldn’t have if you’d washed your hands.

      This is America. We have soap and running water. If you really believe that washing your hands runs the “risk of weakening [your] immune system”, then go move to Senegal. By your logic, by never washing your immune system will grow super-strong, and you’ll be immune to sickness.

  17. john says:

    I’m really impressed at all the people coming out of the woodwork to explain why not washing one’s hands might actually be a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Immune systems rock. (AIDS sucks, and might be a viable counter-argument…)

  18. sean says:

    this graph isn’t cool because I said so

  19. NoseMoking says:

    perhaps then it would be more logical to wash your hands before you take a leak than after.

  20. retro thoughts says:

    I would say that the number of people not washing after using the toilet is actually around 85%. Filthy buggers. And they wonder why they get every cold and flu that goes around. Reminds me to get a large bottle of hand sanitizer before work today.

  21. whitey138 says:

    what i hate is that you have a n automatic toilet that flushes for you, automatic faucets to turn on and off for you and an automatic dryer all so you dont have to touch anything, and yet the doors all swing inwards so you have to grab the handle making your hands dirty from all the people who dont wash. call me obsessive compulsive but i hate when they dont allow paper towels so you can at least open the door with them.

    • Kevin T. says:

      The reasoning behind that is that they think people wash their hands. So, the doors swing inward because people’s hands going in to the bathroom are dirty from not washing in a long time, and thus, reasoning goes, they should touch the least surface area, in this case the flat part of a swinging door. Continuing that reasoning, they reason that people wash after they use the bathroom, and have clean hands, so it doesn’t matter that they have to touch an entire handle. Trouble is, some people don’t wash their hands.

      Germ studies have shown that in general, the outside part of the bathroom door is cleaner than the inside part. But ironically, the people that say they don’t wash because they’ll just get dirty again by touching the door handle is not only wrong, since few of the germs are replaced while touching the doorknob to exit, but makes them part of the problem.

  22. butterflysigh says:

    only need to wash the fingers i used. don’t tell me people actually need their whole hand!

  23. Bruce Eldred says:

    Reminds me of the Sienfeld episode where Jerry’s girlfriend’s father doesn’t wash his hands after using the toilet, then makes Jerry a pizza. If I remember it right he had to break up with the girl over it.

  24. ave says:

    I don’t even touch my penis when I pee. I just use the elastic of my boxers to support it.

  25. ORLY says:

    How people can NOT wash their hands after using a public bathroom…or a bathroom in general is beyond me. Public bathrooms are SO disgusting…people come in and out of there daily and who knows wtf they have been doing before they were all…touching the door handles and the sink knobs and everything else. Hepetitis can be transmitted through urine and tons of stuff through fecal matter, not to mention common things people come in contact with like cold and flu germs among others. Washing your hands for 20 seconds is what is recommended by the CDC, it’s definitely NOT “germaphobic”. But in all honesty, so sue me if I don’t want to get hep from slutty Jane’s pee spray she couldn’t be bothered to wipe off the seat. I will wash for 20 seconds, THANK YOU.

  26. Kevin T. says:

    Personally, I always quickly wash my hands (just one dab of soap will do) whenever I use the bathroom or otherwise get them dirty. I also almost always wash after dinner, since my hands usually get dirty while eating.

    Here’s my philosophy:
    Yes, bathrooms are germy, more so than most other places, but consider for a second going to a bathroom that had just been cleaned and been completely sterile. Also consider that your penis is sterile. But, say you haven’t washed your hands in a few hours. During that time, germs have been building up on your hands as you’ve been going about your business. So, even if you didn’t get dirty while using the bathroom, it’s still a good opportunity to wash your hands anyway since your hands have gotten germy from doing normal stuff, and the longer you go without washing your hands the more germy they get, helping to spread those germs. So, I’d say there are four reasons why you should wash your hands

    1. It’s been a while since you last did it, and you should wash your hands a few times a day just to be sanitary (not only in the winter, but the rest of the year too).
    2. Your genitals may be dirty, not only in the pathogen or bacteria sense, but also from sweat, traces of dry precum from masturbating, sex fluids, and drops of urine from prior times going to the bathroom
    3. The bathroom’s not a very clean place. Also, though it’s bad to not wash your hands, I’d say it’s about 5 times worse if you don’t flush the toilet after you pee, and 20 times worse if you don’t flush after you poop. If I had to choose between someone that doesn’t wash and someone that doesn’t flush, I’d choose the person that didn’t wash, since though the dirty unwasher might pose some threat to my health (and, by not washing, is making the bathroom a dirtier place), the person who doesn’t flush is making the bathroom stinkier, which is a more immediate and visible concern
    4. There’s the emotional aspect. Let’s face it, even right out of the shower, the genitals are a “dirty” part of the body. Though you might touch a friend’s shoulder, head, or hand, it’s extremely rare that you’ll actually be comfortable touching their genitals, even if they were completely sterile (bacteria-wise, that is). By not washing, it’s like that after someone uses the bathroom, if you touch their hands it’s like touching their genitals, or for one more level of separation, if they touch something with their unwashed hands, and you touch it, it’s only a 3 way line of disconnect from touching their genitals, which is sort of unnerving. Washing somehow almost completely rids of that feeling, and rather than seeing the hand as a kind of surrogate for the penis, a clean hand is psychologically just a clean hand, rather than the disease carrier we’ve evolved to see it as after observing another person touch something unclean.

    Yeah, I’ve thought of this a lot, though I was really more forming this into a structured argument while I was in the process of writing. :-)


Your comment

 

 

Search

Get It Emailed Daily


EmailSubscribe
Enter your email address:
 

TwitterFollow us
on Twitter »
FacebookBecome a
Facebook fan »
RSSRSS Feed »
  • Tag Cloud

  • Latest Comments

    Todd on Things that are in Russia, acc…
    Sam on Uses of “click here if y…
    OCV on Uses of “click here if y…
    tyberius on What does the poetic hero of Q…
    Samba. on Things that are in Russia, acc…
    hater on Uses of “click here if y…
    Tourist on this plan… on What does the poetic hero of Q…
    sylderon on What does the poetic hero of Q…
    Sensei Le Roof on Things that are in Russia, acc…
    Wat on Things that are in Russia, acc…
    The green one on All My GraphJam Ladies
    Lavitz on Uses of “click here if y…
    Ona on Uses of “click here if y…
    epiccheezburger_love… on Unilluminated Surface of A Spe…
    Lulzville on All My GraphJam Ladies
  • Most Popular Graphs

  • Graph Archives

  • RSS Cheezburger Network Blog

  • Even More Lulz

  • About GraphJam