Empty hand sanitizers are the biggest tease
Six years ago, pumping was the rage. Now disused stations enrage ME!
I waste 78 seconds a day with the plastic teats on hand sanitizing stations. That’s 9.1 minutes per week, 4.55 hours a month and 54 hours a year of me holding out my vulnerable palms.
I hope to get a squirt. But I usually receive disappointment. Dryness.
I’m an optimist. When I go to church, I taste communion before I’ve popped the bread into my gob — washed it down with a swig of port.
So when I expect cool purifying liquid — but feel air — I feel sacrilege at the pump. Over and over, pea-size amounts of negativity compound into hexes.
Must my hope be a vehicle for punishment?
From the time I enter a building to the time I sit at my desk, I encounter five Purell pump stations.
Get Ann M Votaw’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
There’s usually one on the ground floor, placed between elevator doors like a perky button nose. Then there is another pump on your destination floor, also between the elevator doors. Then there’s a free-standing one right in front of the glass doors near the security scan. Finally, there’s one in the kitchen, one in the hallways between the kitchen and bathroom, and often one at reception.
Installation required global effort during COVID. Then they were nursed regularly. Hands sanitized. Liquid replenished.
Weekly spreadsheets tabulated the number of pumps, their locations, and the volume of sanitizer in volume. These stats provided content for company newsletters.
We’re all in this together.
It’s this or sing Happy Birthday two times while washing your hands raw with soap and water. How stupid!
Then everyone just gave up. And now we have these tacky, pushy, things that make promises they can’t keep.
They’re portable politicians telling you what you want to hear.
They’re pandemic time capsules, holding memories of how stupid we all looked standing on dots and Lysol-ing cardboard boxes.
Ann Votaw is a New York-based writer and comic.
