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Attention all humans

It’s not that hard to get it right:

YES

NO

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 4th, 2005 at 8:17 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “Attention all humans”

  1. Biff Says:
    May 4th, 2005 at 8:41 am
    1

    ok, I’ll bite. Please supply me with an explanation of why the roll should go this way, and why some people are so anal about it.
    I know you are an engineer, so I expect a sufficiently nerdy, er, I mean technical explanation.

  2. Mr. McLaren Says:
    May 4th, 2005 at 10:16 am
    2

    I will make two arguments: one from ergonomics, and one from efficiency.

    Ergonomics: If the roll is beside the seat, it is typically installed at or below the height of my leg/knee. Therefore, in order to get the paper if it is hung “wrong”, I have to go over my leg, under the roll, then pull the paper back up over my leg. Compare this with the ease of pulling straight off the top/front and it’s clear which design is more user-centric.

    Efficiency: For each sheet unrolled, you need to move much further in the “wrong” scenario–in the “right” scenario you can actually stop unrolling with the seam on top of the roll, for minimum work, in the “wrong” scenario you need to unroll at least enough extra paper to leave the seam hanging down under the roll. The amount of extra unrolling is proportional to the current circumference of the roll. (If you look at the two pictures above you can see this simply: I can get a sheet off the “right” roll without doing any unwinding, but to get a sheet off the “wrong” roll I need to unwind at least another sheet worth of length–and probably more due to the ergonomics issue.)

  3. will shetterly Says:
    May 4th, 2005 at 2:25 pm
    3

    Ah. You don’t have cats that think a toilet paper dispenser is fun to spin.

  4. George Says:
    May 4th, 2005 at 7:20 pm
    4

    Ahh, sheer luxury, that! Where I work, we’re lucky if there’s paper on the roll! These kids today, with their “over” or “under” complaining. But for the record, when there’s paper on the roll, I’m with Chris. Wait, no! That doesn’t sound right….

  5. Mr. McLaren Says:
    May 5th, 2005 at 1:14 am
    5

    That’s what you get for working in Yorkshire.

  6. George Says:
    May 5th, 2005 at 2:17 pm
    6

    And today in the caffeteria, we each got a handful of cold dirt.

  7. Homo Sum » Blog Archive » Attention All Humans Says:
    April 6th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
    7

    [...] look, it’s been almost two years since I felt compelled to give all humanity a command, but this one has really been building [...]

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