For a long time I have whined to anyone who will listen about poor hand dryers.
A terrible hand dryer tells me a lot about your business, and I will judge you for it.
Single Purpose
Now, many people think that I take hand dryers too seriously, but I find nothing more annoying than a single purpose appliance that cannot perform its single purpose.
Take a toaster for example: if that toaster failed to toast bread, what would you do? You’d take that nonfunctional crap back to the shop and demand a refund.
What about a kettle? If it only boiled water to 50 degrees, completely ruining your cup of tea, what would you do? You’d jump in your frigate, sail to the manufacturer, and give them a full broadside from your cannons.
The first layer of my anger comes from the fact something was sold that cannot perform its basic function. The second layer of anger comes from the knowledge that someone wasted raw materials, and the labour of workers, to make something that fails to do what it is supposed to.
If it cannot do the thing it was supposed to do (which I guess 90% of the things sold cheap online), then we should not have destroyed the environment to create it.
I have the same hatred for things that stop working or break quickly. Planned obsolescence (looking at you, Smart TVs) should be considered a crime.
What is ‘bad’?
So you’re probably asking:
I’ve never failed to have my hands dried by a hand dryer.
— You, a hand washer
Well you probably forgot about your moist mitts because it was a meaningless part of your day, and you moved on.
BUT I CANNOT MOVE ON.
I cannot stand there knowing that someone manufactured, someone sold, someone bought, someone installed, and someone signed off on a disappointment. You had so many opportunities to get this right.
It’s made worse when you go to an airport, or similar sized establishment, knowing that there was someone who requisitioned hundreds of these hand dryers, without actually trying them first.
Let’s go through my favourite examples of ‘bad’.
You come away, and your hands are still damp
This is pretty obvious.
No matter how long you hold your sopping wet meat claws under this asthmatic waste of energy, the water refuses to understand it’s not welcome.
Enjoy rubbing your hands on your trousers to get them actually dry.
It has mods
Like drifters around Tokyo, some manufacturers insist on adding features, before they get the basics right.
Oh good, you added a blue light to show me where to place my hands, so I can be sure your appliance is bad at its job.
What’s that, you added a timer to count down to when my hands are dry still wetter than Davy Jones’ locker?
How about redirecting some of that engineering prowess into figuring out how to actually dry hands?
It sprays water on you
In the past decade, the rise of the trendy minimalist hand dryers has set us back.
Dyson, for example, nailed it (which I will get on to), and then shifted to building these horrors:
Yeah, I did want my trousers covered in my hands’ run-off, how did you know?
What genius thought that it was a good idea to point a jet of air towards the user? Someone got paid a lot of money, unlike me, who is just angry. Who’s the real winner? They are of course.
But it’s still a crap design, unless you have shares in companies which sell ‘Wet Floor’ signs.
Does ‘good’ exist?
I consider one hand dryer design to be hand dryer royalty. From a time before Dyson excelled in splashback, they built…
…drumroll…
The original Dyson Airblade.
Now I hate Dyson as much as the next person — James Dyson can do one for his hypocrisy alone — but this hand dryer is the apex of the species.
If this hand dryer were an animal it would be the fearless honey badger. Water trembles in fear knowing this beast will exorcize it from your digits.
Sure, if it was fitted poorly water would pool in the bottom, but that’s a skill issue for the installer. Configured correctly, this dryer can dehumidify your hands from 100 metres away.
No notes.
However, as I mentioned above, the original Airblade was put to rest and replaced with an inferior yet trendy dumpster fire.
RIP lord of the hand dryers.
Don’t @ me.
I know I’m right.