[geeks] Rant: Tech Regression

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

My employer leases nearly two floors of office space in a building in
northwest Austin.  This small building has two restrooms per floor, and,
until a month or two ago, each restroom had two old-fashioned metal
dispensers that held packs of folded hand towels.

The building owner sent out an email[0] announcing the installation of
new! improved! high-tech! automated! hand towel dispensers in all the
restrooms.  The email extolled the virtues of no-longer having to pull a
sheet of paper two inches to remove a towel.  Productivity would
improve!  We would be living in the future!

The motorised towel dispensers bind daily.  At least one does not work
at all (after a little over a month).  Dispensing multiple towels (in
the case of a spill or such) requires this repeated hand-waving motion
that makes the operator look like an idiot.   The batteries also don't
seem to last that long, either, as they're starting to sound very tired.
The new dispensers also stick out of the wall a good six inches,
removing a foot of usable counter space at the sinks.  All so that,
rather than swiftly pulling a towel two inches, we can wait nearly three
seconds for the motor to dispense a towel.

Never mind that the old dispensers had no moving parts to fail, no
batteries to replace, did not jam, dispensed multiple towels as easily
as one, were faster, and tucked neatly into the wall out of the way.
We're in the future now!


[0] Utilising the latest in annoying twittering HTML, of course.
-- 
Jonathan Patschke     )  "So far, 99% of illegal activity has been caused
Elgin, TX            (    by criminals."
USA                   )                                    --David Willis