High-tech sensor glitch at St. Louis airport results in repeated frivolous flushing

Nov. 9, 2009

As anyone who has ever traveled knows, smooth saling (or in this case smooth flying) takes preparation. Packing your luggage and printing out your boarding pass well ahead of arriving at the airport are both very helpful, as is “taking care of business” another way – namely, in the bathroom.

But sometimes, nature calls when you are least prepared for it. Like when your plane from Las Vegas lands in the St. Louis airport, for example, and you decide that it’s best to, uh, “make a deposit” even before going to the baggage carousel for your luggage.

Such was the case for poor Punditty last week, and fortunately, the high-tech, indoor plumbing at Lambert International Airport in St. Louis was clean, shiny and available.

But there was just one problem – at least one East Terminal Men's Room toilet was highly, highly sensitive, just as it's been for the last two or three years.

Note the red-light sensor in the photos accompanying this report. Now, imagine yourself sitting on this porcelain throne and perhaps shifting just a little bit in your positioning as you do what you have to do. Now imagine a sudden and unexpected FLUSH! It takes you by surprise, but you figure out what happened (sensitive sensors) and you tell yourself to be as still as possible. But then you move on to Phase II of Number 2, the phase involving toilet paper.

As you do what you need to do, here it comes again – the mighty and wholly unexpected FLUSH! WOOSH goes the water! But wait – you didn’t want it to do that just yet, you were just trying to finish up. Nonetheless, the high-tech sensors have flushed the toilet on you a second time, and you start to get a little rattled. Ever so carefully, you finish up, but before you can stand, FLUSH! The toilet flushes itself again. Hooray for technological advances!

By the time you exit the stall, the toilet has flushed no fewer than four times.

Some people are a little squeamish about touching the toilet handles, so that’s probably the reasoning behind the sensors. But do we really need to be flushing the toilet three or four times per use? Methinks not. Methinks this is an ongoing problem (it’s happened to me on more than one occasion in this particular airport over the years) that no one reports because, well, it’s not exactly kitchen-table conversation and besides, to whom do you report it?

Most people are just happy to get out of the bathroom after a situation like that.

If you’ve experienced this “Surprise Flush” in the East Terminal Men’s Room at Lambert International Airport in St. Louis but have been too busy to tell any airport personnel about the problem, now’s your chance.

The airport Web site does not give an e-mail address for contact, but you can contact them at:

Lambert-St. Louis International Airport

Airport Administration Office
P.O. Box 10212
St. Louis, MO 63145-0212 U.S.A.
314-426-8000

Punditty will be writing via snail mail to let them know they’ve got an ongoing high-tech glitch in at least one Men’s room.. It’s time to put an end to Frivolous Flushing!

Indoors or outdoors, the doors are open at punditty.com.

The Punditty Project is retroactively sponsored by www.widsheets.com. WIDsheets: Write It Down and stay organized.