Dilemma at the urinals

In a bar in central London not so long ago – went to use the toilet, and there was an attendant guy in there with all the usual paraphernalia – fragrances, sweets, soaps, combs (I think?). Normally when I use the urinals it’s about 50:50 whether I wash my hands or not and depends on various factors like degree of splashback felt, how much of a hurry I’m in, whether anyone else would see me leaving without doing so, etc.

But whenever there is a guy there, it immediately comes down to one thing only – if I have a pound coin I will wash them and if I don’t then I do not – cannot! The former because knowing that the custodian of the sinks knows that ablutions were avoided is just too much (and potentially feeling the eyes like daggers in the back when exiting); the latter because taking his services and then not paying may well whip him up into some sort of frenzied rage (or at the very least seems ungrateful).

On this particular occasion I had a pound so I allowed him to soap me up, turn the tap on and off, and hand me towels. When I rejoined my friends I was castigated for doing so because it only ‘encourages’ them. I had not thought about it from this angle before – as I understand it they don’t get any fixed wage so I thought that as many people as possible should pay them for their services.

But perhaps this type of vocation is more akin to begging – if these are services that no-one actually wants then maybe they shouldn’t be ‘guilted’ into paying for them!

I would like to canvass views from other Urban observers on the issue of trendy bar toilet attendants.

Expression impression

I was thinking about school days recently and I recalled a friend and I each being able to do a recognisable impression of someone in the year below simply by pulling a certain facial expression. Absolutely no words or bodily actions were required.

I’m sure he cannot have walked around 24/7 with exactly that expression on his face, for that would not allow him to exhibit the whole range of emotions that humans are capable of displaying.

So what was special about that particular expression? Or perhaps it was that his facial structure lent itself to falling naturally into that sort of position? Does anyone else know of anyone who can be successfully mimicked using just one facial position? If so, what do you think is the reason behind the success of the impression?

Mirthful murderers

I was discussing current affairs with some friends last night. One noted that there had recently been uproar and revulsion in the US in reaction to a couple of students in Pennsylvania who posed for Facebook pictures dressed as victims of the Virginia Tech gun massacre.

One's initial reaction to this seems to be to concur with the revulsion (or at least mine was). But then the same friend noted that another of our friends attended a Hallowe'en party this year dressed as Harold Shipman. I recalled back to when I first heard about that, and I reacted with mirth.

But when you analyse the two situations with cold logic, what is the difference between them? Is it simply that different amounts of time have passed since the killings that brought respective notoriety? And if time is the key factor, how long do you have to leave it before revulsion turns to mirth? Is it a sliding scale? Or does the severity of the crime have to be thrown into the equation too??

A pearler of a conversation

Alright, so my Oystercard blue plastic wallet was getting a bit worn and falling apart. So much so, in fact, that once or twice the card itself had fallen out of the wallet into my pocket.

Therefore the next time I was passing through a tube station (which happened to be Temple), I went to the old guy at the window and had the following exchange with him:

Me: "Have you got any of those plastic Oystercard wallets?"
Him: "What's the magic word?"
Me: "Please?"
Him: [gets new wallet and pushes it under the glass, plus he may have said something like "That's better" but in honesty I cannot recall]
Me: "Thanks" [walks off]

I spent the remainder of the short walk to my office thinking about the exchange, and whether my opening question had been impolite. I have concluded that since I didn't actually know whether or not the guy had any wallets behind the desk, my question was a genuine 'fact-finder' and therefore didn't need to be adorned with P's or Q's. The guy probably thought I was directly asking for one (that would have been my next question) and therefore demanded politeness.

Does anyone concur or disagree with my analysis? If it is correct, I wonder what someone with (say) Asperger's Syndrome would do when asked for the magic word? Surely someone with such a strict literal interpretation of the world and language would be bemused, since they would not be able to make the link that the guy was inferring that they were asking for a wallet?!

I'll stop there.

Long-changed

I was in the queue in Stanford's book and map shop at lunchtime, and the woman in front of me bought a book worth £9.95. She paid with a ten pound note.

Now, I didn't actually see what happened immediately after, but then the woman started as if to leave the shop, then stopped and said that the shop man hadn't given her the 5p change. He said that he had, and she said, "No-o..." [where one's voice goes down, and then up again on the 'o']

His sardonic retort was, "I can give it to you again if you want?" The woman seemed happy with the outcome, took the 5p and left the shop.

If the woman was right, why wasn't she incensed by the man's sardonicism? If the man was right, then one of two queries arises:

- if it was a genuine error by the woman, does she have a memory shorter than a goldfish?

- if it was a deliberate ploy by the woman, is this a con trick which is easy to perpetrate, and if you accumulate the profit of 5p (or 1p for £X.99 items) from every cash transaction you ever make, you can earn good money?

Have any readers witnessed this first hand?