Toilet tweeting takes multitasking a step too far

A few weeks back, Which? research revealed the scary fact that many mobile phone surfaces are packed with bacteria.

One mobile it tested had so much nasty bacteria that it could have potentially made the user ill.

Having just read some recent research on people’s toilet habits, I’m surprised that our results didn’t show mobiles to be even dirtier. Of the 2,000 plus people it asked, The Co-Operative Pharmacy found that:

• One in three people use a mobile phone or BlackBerry when on the toilet
• One in twenty people also surf their laptop on the loo
• Nearly one in three don’t use soap or handwash and one in five don’t always wash their hands after being on the loo.

Altogether now – ewww! Those facts combined don’t make happy reading for anyone with even a smidgeon of hygiene-consciousness. They would certainly make me think twice before touching someone else’s computer or mobile phone, especially when we now know that the surfaces of mobile phones are potential breeding grounds for nasty bacteria.

It’s the toilet, not the pub!

If I’m honest, I’m baffled why anyone would want to hold a phone conversation while seated on the porcelain throne. Surely it would raise some questions from the person on the other end. ‘What’s that noise?? Is it raining there? It’s very echoey…’, ‘Oh, I’m, erm, standing by a stream…in a cave…’ I have no idea how you’d go about explaining the noise of the flush.

You wouldn’t invite a friend to come into the toilet with you to carry on a conversation, would you? So why would you impose the background noises of your ablutions on them over the phone? Especially when you might be risking your health in the process.

I don’t care how short on time we might all be in this hectic, multimedia age. No text or conversation is so urgent that it can’t wait five or ten minutes. And if your toilet activities take longer than that, quite frankly the only person you should be calling is your doctor.