Sometimes you just have to wonder about people. You have to wonder just how stupid people have gotten. Does there really need to be a warning not to do half of the things we are warned not to do? Did someone really try to eat the stuff that comes in that little packet that gets stuffed in the boxes that hold your various electronic gear? Was there a time when people walked around routinely jamming various pieces of metal into electrical outlets?

There is a scene in a book by Douglas Adams who wrote the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” books. I believe it is in the fourth book called “So Long and Thanks for All the Fish” where a character called Wonko the Sane explains exactly when he determined that the rest of the world had, in fact, gone insane. He refers to the moment when he looked at a box of toothpicks and found that there were instructions explaining how to use a toothpick. That may be pretty stupid, but I think, just today, I found the lowest common denominator. I found this in a Starbucks.

I was at Starbucks to meet with some people. This was a good thing. One of those people had made a joke that he felt every time you stepped foot into a Starbucks a little piece of your soul got sucked away. I have a slightly more optimistic view of Starbucks, but I could see where he was going. As I listened to the Starbucks radio station broadcasting on XM I started to wonder if perhaps too much power was being handed over to a company that was originally created just to sell coffee and got its name from “Moby Dick.”

I didn’t become too disturbed, however, until I walked into the restroom. Over the years I have become a kind of expert on restrooms. I tend to need to pee a lot and this means I have visited restrooms both great and not-so-great. I have been into restrooms both big and small. I have been in restrooms that were entirely manual and those that were entirely automatic in everything.

However, nothing in all of my travels could prepare me for what I saw here. Now, if you have been in a restroom with those hand dryers you have probably marveled at the pictures that explain how to use them. You would think that it would be pretty intuitive but there are those pictures explaining that you should rub your hands beneath the warm air and usually some comedian has scratched the extra step that you should wipe your hand on your pants onto the thing.

In this restroom I stepped up to the sink and I washed my hand. I turned to the left and saw the paper towel dispenser. I stopped when I saw the row of written and pictorial instructions written there. You see here were not just instructions for how to dispense a paper towel. No, here was a sign instructing employees that they needed to wash their hands before returning to work and beneath that were pictures and words explaining how to wash your hands.

Yes, instructions on how to wash your hands. It was like reading some kind of comic strip. There were little cartoon hands turning on the water. There were little cartoon hands pressing the soap dispenser. There were little cartoon hands lathering and rinsing and drying and using a paper towel to shut off the sink. Beneath each picture were a few sentences explaining what the little hands were doing.

I stared in amazement. I looked around to see if I was on camera. Ashton Kutcher did not emerge from anywhere to tell me I was being Punk’d. No one pulled back the mirror to yell surprise.

I looked at it again and I was not seeing things, evidently. Since the instructions were below the admonishment to employees to wash their hands I had to conclude that these instructions were primarily meant for employees. This made me wonder when it was decided that these instructions were needed. Before these scenes was there a rash of employees standing befuddled and confused before the sink flailing hysterically at the faucets? Were employees found eating the soap instead of using it to wash?

I don’t know who to blame for this. Was it Starbucks’ fault? Did they do some kind of analysis, probably involving consultants, who determined that employees were not washing their hands? Were too many employees emerging with paper towels stuffed in the mouths and their hands dripping wet?

Should I blame the paper towel dispenser makers? Did they feel that people were not using their products properly? Were more consultants used? If I had to pick I would say that this had the distinct air of consultancy about it. There were probably teams of them hired by somebody in the paper towel dispenser factory because some manager somewhere read a metric that indicated people were either not using their products correctly or not spending enough time reading the fronts of them. Despite much pleading from lower level people who actually made the things reminding managers that there really wasn’t much in the way of complexity when it came to paper towel usage the manager hired consultants. Metrics don’t lie, of course. They don’t do much of anything except lay there and look very numeric.

The consultants probably charged thousands upon thousands of hours. They probably conducted interviews and surveys. They probably talked to people on the street. They probably spent hours in various Starbucks stores across the globe. They probably categorically denied and ignored the pleas from the people who made the dispensers and told them that they were highly qualified and highly paid consultants and that their numbers indicated that only by adding instructions on how to wash your hands would the paper towel dispenser industry be able to move forward in the twenty-first century.

So, the lowest common denominator was achieved again. In case you happen to forget how to wash your hands you may want to visit your local Starbucks. I am not even sure if this is in all of them or this one. I am wondering if this will be spreading. Will instructions for walking soon be found in pairs of shoe? Will instructions for breathing be mailed to our homes as part of some new Presidential healthcare initiative?

I am not sure, but I am pretty sure of one thing. I am pretty sure that the depths to which we can sink are nearly as limitless as the heights to which we can aspire.

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is now available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.