Dyson

Yesterday I wrote a post about hand dryers in a public restroom. It’s a subject matter that I never imagined myself writing about, not once in a million posts. So what are the odds? I’m going to write about that same subject TWO POSTS IN A ROW!

Wednesday I took the day off of work—my final weekday off until Labor Day—so that I could go with the family to King’s Island. We had a nice time at the park. It rained REALLY HARD just before we left, so that a) it wasn’t that hot and b) it wasn’t crowded because the rain scared many people away. We never had to wait more than 20 or 25 minutes for a ride, and we didn’t start to feel hot until the end of the day. A good day.

But I’m not here to write about that (I WILL write about it tomorrow, though). As I said, I wanted to write about hand dryers again. Over the course of the day I went to the restrooms at King’s Island a couple of times, and I noticed that some of the restrooms had a hand dryer system that I’d never seen before. It was the Dyson Airblade, and to use it a person stuck his/her wet hands with fingers pointed down into the device and then moved his hands up and down. Jets of powerful, cold air rushed out of the system onto the hands and dried them. As I used the system, I read the description, which stated that it was the “most sanitary, most energy-efficient hand dryer available today.”

The thing worked—I’ll give you that. Older hand dryers, the kind where you have to push a button and basically a blow dryer on the wall comes on, didn’t really do anything. A person mostly rubbed his her hands under the hand dryer for a few seconds before giving up and either shaking the water all over the floor or wiping the water on his/her shirt. This system actually dried my hands.

On the other hand, so do all of the newer cold air hand dryers that blow the air onto your hands at ultra high speeds. Also, it didn’t seem all that sanitary. Sure, it was DESIGNED so that users didn’t need to touch the Airblade at all, but I couldn’t help but bump my hands on the system as I moved them up and down. It wasn’t a superior product. It just had a unique design.

And that’s how I would describe all Dyson systems. I remember all of the TV commercials that aired when the Dyson vacuum cleaner was released in the United States. They all glowingly reported how the Dyson vacuum was so much different than other vacuums, and how much better they cleaned. The weird, bladeless fan made the same claims. And his first invention, the wheelbarrow that replaced the “wheel” with a “ball,” also made the same claims. In the end, though, Consumer Reports says that the vacuums don’t work as well as traditional bagged vacuums, the fan cools about as effectively, and the ballbarrow, though it had its advantages, broke more easily because the plastic ball couldn’t handle the weight of materials that the rubber and steel wheel on a traditional wheelbarrow could.

So this is another Dyson product that isn’t better, just different and more expensive.

I could end the blog entry there, but I need to admit that—if I’m being honest—the real reason I don’t like Dyson products is because of Mr. Dyson himself. In his commercials, he never smiles, except maybe ironically, and his facial expressions and tone of voice seem to say to me, “You stupid people have been using these simple, moronic products for years because you’re too dumb to come up with better alternatives.”

I think Dyson should change its tag line from “Dyson: I just think things should work properly” to “Dyson: I just think things should be pretentious.”