Almost half of New Zealand office workers have caught their colleagues leaving the bathroom with dirty hands.
According to new research from OfficeMax, hand hygiene has taken a backseat since the Covid-19 pandemic quieted down.
In the survey of 500 Kiwis, 42% of office workers admitted they’ve seen coworkers walk out of the bathroom without washing OR drying their hands.
Turns out, about a third of have spotted their coworkers skipping the basics - 33% noticed people not drying their hands after washing, and 31% saw washing without any soap.
But seriously, why the heck would we pretend to wash our hands without fully committing to the soap and water?
Hazel Wright, Care Sector Lead at OfficeMax, shed some light on this odd habit, known as “social handwashing.”
“It’s rare, but in some cases, people can go to extreme lengths to appear to wash their hands,” she said.
Wright explains people will go as far as to “run the tap, rustle paper towels, or trigger the hand drier with no real intention of using the facilities as they were designed.”
Let’s be real, we’ve all probably rushed out of the bathroom at least once, skipping the hand wash, hoping our desk buddy doesn’t notice we were in there at the same time.
And that’s not even the worst of it. Nearly one in five Kiwis (19%) have fessed up to being caught in the ultimate bathroom nightmare - being left with no loo paper mid-business.
Even though these hygiene fails are happening, most Kiwis are too uncomfortable to call out their fellow flush and rushers.
Just over half (51%) of the people surveyed said they wouldn’t feel confident calling out a colleague, and that number jumps to 62% when it comes to the ladies.
Hopefully, everyone remembered to wash their hands yesterday, because it was Global Handwashing Day! But, at this point, we should probably be celebrating that every day, considering how slack us Kiwis are with our hand hygiene…
Now to find out the stats behind how many of us play the waiting game, just sitting there in a silent standoff, hoping the person in the next stall leaves first – if you know, you know.
