[geeks] Rant: Tech Regression

[Brooke Gravitt]

On 10/25/07, Jonathan C. Patschke <jp at celestrion.net> wrote:
> 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!

We have these as well, have for about 8 months. They *really* suck.
Pull, whirr, Pull, whirr, Pull.... etc.

Gack!