If you read r/Custodians, a large number of the threads are complaints about teachers and students making messes. r/ServerLife is complaints about customer behavior in restaurants. r/nursing? Bizarre patient behavior (though to be fair they also vent about the grief of losing a patient).

It’s understandable.

It isn’t just that the customer is not actually right; it’s that they are often strangely wrong, contrary to expectations, and customers make the job more difficult. 

I get it. Community is often built around shared complaint.

But when I was supervising new teachers, I told them to stay out of the faculty room. 

That’s because there is no way to function in the job without understanding that people are going to be people and that you have to design, maintain, and adjust your expectations accordingly.

Bathrooms are the best example. There are sensors everywhere for water, soap, and hand dryers. As often as not, one or all aren’t working. 

I stand there waving my hand under or over a sensor, and nothing happens. The water doesn’t flow. There is no soap, or there is a cheap pump bottle on the counter, and it is empty too. The dryer usually turns on, granted, but it doesn’t stay on or it just doesn’t dry. If there is a paper towel dispenser, it’s empty.

The counter is pooled with water, so that I can’t lean against it, but I have to lean against it to reach the sensors, so my front gets wet. And not only is the floor full of puddles, half the toilet seats are filthy or broken.

The sensor on the toilet only works as expected some of the time. Sometimes it flushes while you are sitting there, or not at all, or else it is pumping thousands of gallons in one continuous flush, for hours on end.

And though custodians complain that teachers pee on the toilet seat and students pee on the floor and throw toilet paper everywhere, what if that’s the way human beings behave? What if your job is not just to clean the bathroom but to make sure it stays clean. What if the performance of your job means that design, proper installation, and good maintenance should allow for human beings to be human beings?

Designers seem lately to think that automation will fix everything, but instead it seems to make things worse.  An experience designed to be easy and hands-free takes even longer and is harder, and you walk out with wet hands that weren’t actually washed, just doused.

If something is breaking regularly or not working as intended, that’s probably poor design, sure. But it’s also a failure of maintenance. If it’s not stocked or not clean, that’s poor maintenance. You have to pay for maintenance, and that means paying people. 

Yeah, I know. The first place organizations look to cut costs is staff. I get it. 

My favorite bathroom in New York City is at Bryant Park. I will wait twenty minutes in line to use that bathroom. Why? I mean, it only has two stalls, and there’s nothing special about the cramped little ladies room.

Because the park pays for a full time attendant. 

The bathroom is clean, smells good, and is even pleasant to use. In spite of humans being human beings.