The first flush is the deepest, or at least it should be.
Taking Care of Business of Kingsville writes:
Dear Westie, I know about bending my knees when lowering or lifting anything over 20 kilos in weight. I know to stop at red lights, to give way at the dotted line. I don’t swear in front of children, I’m happy that vaping is on the way to being banned.
I’m aware that society is a compromise. I trust that, even though I do not always understand the reasons behind the myriad rules and restrictions that govern our life, they are for my own good and that they make the world a safer place for us all. I didn’t even mind two years of COVID lock down.
But, even a compliant chappy like myself, has to draw the line somewhere. That somewhere being the flush button in the toilets at my workplace. For some, no doubt, well-intentioned water-saving reason the full-flush buttons on these toilets are disabled, meaning one can only half-flush, no matter how in need one might be of the full catastrophe. Sometimes I end up half-flushing half a dozen times, thereby wasting several times the water I might have used in one good full-flush.
Can I take this question to HR, or should I just shut up? Maybe you can tell me how I might un-disable the full-flush button?
Help me Dear Westie, you’re my only hope.
Oh TCOBOK, what a world we live in! A world where personal liberties are trampled, not by tyrants in golden thrones, but by bureaucrats tinkering with ceramic ones. Yes, I speak of the scourge of our age: the half-flush-only toilet.
This is the hill I choose to die on—a porcelain peak upon which my freedom has been flushed, but only halfway. Society’s obsession with control knows no bounds. You’d think the rule makers could content themselves with taxing us, surveilling us, and telling us what colour our recycling bins should be.
But no! They had to invade the bathroom, the sacred realm of solitude, with their water-saving agenda. What madness compels a society to design a flush that refuses to finish the job? Imagine it: you’ve done your business, nature’s call answered heroically, and you press that half-flush button, optimistic despite the odds. What do you get? A pitiful trickle. A damp whisper of what could have been. Instead of the triumphant whoosh of waste whisked away, you’re left staring at a haunting reminder of bureaucracy’s failure. And what do you do? You flush again. And again. Until your water-saving mechanism has wasted more water than a full flush would have in the first place. Oh, the irony!
Now, you ask whether this issue should be taken to HR. I think not. They are likely part of the problem. I’m sure they had a hand in this shrinkflation-in-another-guise toilet nonsense – no doubt limiting the depth of flush ‘for your convenience’.
Far better to take to the dark interwebs in search of other full flush fans who have worked out a way to take matters into their own hands (Ewwww! That sounds awful. Ed.) to get the full flush they so richly deserve.
Until then, press, press and press again, all the way to Werribee.
From last edition
In last’s month’s Dear Westie, we dealt with the issue of people holding up other shoppers by reversing into supermarket car park spaces instead of driving straight in. We received several texts from people who agreed with us, that reversing in is a complete waste of time. But no correspondence at all from the reversers in question. A little birdie told us they were going to reply, But they had to finish parking the car first. That was two weeks ago. We’re not holding our breath.
