>>I can't be the only person bothered by this.

Nope. Lots of people have OCD. ;-)

For your joke to work, I'd need to leave the public convenience twenty times for every one time I use it. And I don't. So ha.

I must have OCD too then. After washing my hands if I have to open a door to leave the public toilets I pull the door open with my little finger on my left hand. I'm right handed so I hope any germs will stay on that finger. My Mrs brings an anti bacterial liquid with her and uses that. I blame, what might be termed as, obssesive cleanliness from being brought up for a few years in West Africa and habits learnt then are hard to break.

Yeah, I've also got mild OCD so that bothers me too. OCD is not just about obsessive checking; it's anything Obsessive which you feel Compelled to do. So people with mild cleanliness obsession need to wash their hands after travelling on public transport, or are bothered by the fact that, after you wash your hands, you have to turn the tap off with your clean hands, but the tap is "dirty" because you turned it on with your dirty hands... Of course, extreme cases spend three or four hours a day in the bath, obsessively washing, and refuse to sit on any chair that someone else has sat on, because it's "dirty". Mild obsession is much easier to live with of course.

The thing with the taps isn't OCD; it's logic.

I did think this was just me until a chance conversation a couple of weeks ago revealed that opening the door with your little finger is a surprisingly common tactic. I do that, too.

yup. me too.

I was only half-joking, btw.

I suppose it all depends on whether most people doing a No.2 wash their hands. I would have thought that most would. People are most likely to not wash their hands after a No. 1 which is usually bacterially sterile in which case you are probably OK. In any case you are still spending too much time thinking about this sort of thing.

I believe in Canada they have a very sensible rule that all doors in a building must open outwards as that is much safer in the event of a fire.

If you go to the kind of places frequented by people who don't wash their hands after wiping their arse, then you'll get no sympathy from me.

And if it's less scatological, and just general muck on their hands you're worried about, how do you deal with handling money?

If you go to the kind of places frequented by people who wipe their arses with money, you'll get no sympathy from me.

That actually made me laugh out loud....