Employees Must Wash Hands Before Leaving the Restroom

The other day Linda and I visited a fast food restaurant to use their facilities. And there was that sign posted on the wall. You know, the one about employees washing their hands before returning to work. I looked around me and wondered, “Who checks the hands of all these employees”? So I peeked around inside the restroom and outside the door. There was not a single, owner, manager, assistant manager, associate manager, shift supervisor, or fellow employee checking the hands of the employees as they returned to preparing my food. And I was struck by the fact that my mother always checked my hands before I sat down to eat. And we didn’t even have a sign posted in the bathroom. It was then that I clouds parted and the voice said: “No one checks their hands, dummy”!

If no one checks their hands, then what good is sign? It didn’t influence my behavior, although my mother did. And no one in the mens room, employee or otherwise, would ever be influence by such a sign.  It was then that the floor tiles parted and the voice floated up saying; “It was the faceless bureaucrats, dummy”!

So what good is the sign?  Why, look at the economic benefit provided by posting signs in all these restaurants!  So I Googled the number of restaurants and gas stations in the United States using data from Fall 2015 and 2013 respectively and came up with 744,021 sites.  I have never been in one, but have to presume that the lady’s room also have their versions of the same sign.  That is a whopping 1,488,042 “Employees Must Wash Their Hands Before Leaving the Restroom” signs.  Now I don’t know about you, but I guess that it must cost at least $20 to make, ship, and install one of those ubiquitous signs.  And that is $29,760,840 of economic benefit to our economy!  Why God Bless America and all those Faceless Bureaucrats for making our country great!

Wait, wait, stop waving those flags!  Don’t you and I pay for all those signs when we buy gasoline and burgers?  Why do I have to pay for a sign that provides me no benefit?  That makes me mad!  Why What Would Papa Do?  Why he would rip one of those signs off the wall and take it home with him – after all he paid for it!