About free money and silly design: not all is as it seems

This has been long coming; I have not had a good rant on here for a very long time (in fact, I have probably ranted twice before) and the time is…NOW. If anyone is not in the mood for a collective catharsis through ranting, please stop reading; go do something useful, like learn the five best ways to place a bet!

But what is this about?

We are in Bulgaria at the moment and today I got so cross in a coffee bar bathroom that I remembered an old joke from these parts of the world. It goes like this:

A man is sitting in a coffee bar with his friend sharing life-wisdom.

‘You know, I don’t believe in signs any longer!’ – he says.

‘Why, what happened?’ – his friend asked.

‘Well, yesterday I was so disappointed. I went in a bar and saw a sign saying ‘Ladies’; went in and it was a toilet. I am telling you, things are not as they seem to be and we shouldn’t believe in signs.’

Today, I went into a coffee bar, saw a sign and went in – it was what it was meant to be, no surprises here. Things went completely wrong when I tried to wash my hands. There I was, standing in front of the sink, staring at the water tap and for the life of me I could not see how to put it on. Having stared the tap down for some time I decided that it works with a sensor.

There I was, waiving my hands under the tap, to the left, to the right – nothing. Not a bl**dy drop.

People started coming in, waiting in line behind me to wash their hands. By this time, I am completely flustered; I looked underneath the sink, behind the tap – nothing! Not an inkling of how the fre*ky thing may work. Finally, I admitted defeat and asked a lady behind me whether she knows how to put the water on; and she did.

This tap was designed so that the handle was a little blob at the back which I had already tried to twist; but it didn’t work by twisting it (although it was round, so gives the impression of something that should be twisted). This handle had to be pushed left and right to start and stop.

If this was an intelligence or dexterity test I failed it miserably; and there was considerable loss of dignity in the process. What I can’t understand, though, is why anybody would design a water tap that people can’t figure out how to use.

And this is not the first time this has happened; about a month ago, I spent good minute or two in a bathroom in Brussels figuring out how to put the water on!

This made me think about two other cases where form gives way to substance, like:

• A sign over a cash point machine (an ATM) saying ‘Free money’! No, this machine is not giving me free money; it is my money that I got in exchange for my labour. What this means is that the bank this ATM machine belongs to is not going to charge me for access to MY money (which by the way the bank uses routinely to make more money).
• A poster in the widow of a betting shop urging people ‘to invest in a bet’! You can’t be serious, right. Betting can never be an investment; quite the reverse – sometimes investments can be closer to a bet but this is another story.

There! I feel so much better now and ready to face the next water tap in a public toilet, or the next invitation to invest in a betting shop. Whatever!

Have you any experience of silly design or misleading signs? Please feel free to share; after all this is supposed to be a collective catharsis!