Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Toilet paper guillotine

The Georgia Pacific Ultima. Not having seen it function any other way, I have to say that it is designed to permanently maim employees, causing them to take fewer bathroom breaks out of fear.

It is a grey box mounted on the stall wall, roughly two feet in height, slightly wider than a roll of toilet paper. There is an opening on the front towards the bottom where the roll is clearly visible if you're nimble enough to rest your head in your lap while occupying the throne. Underneath the roll there is a plastic barrier in the front and some sort of toilet roll breaker for disposing of empty rolls behind it, underneath which there is another opening for the discarded roll to fall to the floor.

The unlucky lottery winner of the empty toilet roll has to reach his hand into the box above the old roll and gently nudge the new roll. The new roll comes down with force of the boulder at the beginning of the first Indiana Jones movie, only more quickly. This forces the unfortunate victim's hand down until his wrist is smashed on the plastic barrier underneath. To make this more terrifying, the old roll also drops, gets neatly split in half and falls to the floor as if to say, "This could've been your hand."

Personally, I'd feel safer in one of these.