Faucet follies

I was the victim of the worst shower design ever this weekend while staying at a friend's house. The only visible control was on the showerhead, a knob you could turn. This knob didn't do anything. Pulling, pushing, attempting to turn, both on the knob and the showerhead itself, did nothing.

I had to break down and ask how to turn it on.

You pull down on the nozzle of the faucet. How in the world would you ever think of that? Especially when there is a knob on the side of the showerhead? The knob on the side, by the way, changed the stream from continous to pulsing.

It's similar to an example they have at baddesigns.com (a great site, by the way, it's a great deal of fun to browse). I would have sent them a really bad example of the credit card machine they use at a supermarket here in Albuquerque, but I couldn't get a good picture of it before I was nearly thrown out by a manager type.

In a related vein, proving that remembering the previous state is not always a good thing, the normal shower I use has that rod you pull up to send the water to the showerhead. I always make it a point to push it back down and turn off the faucet after that. Other people are not so considerate. I've been nailed by cold water more than once. At a previous place with a similar shower, one particularly bad "I'm not a morning person" morning, I was so enraged, I struck out and hit the showerhead so hard I broke it.

Posted by Chad Lundgren on Tuesday, May 28, 2002 (Link)

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