I hate hand dryers in washrooms. I’m not alone: if Wikipedia is to be believed, 63% of people preferred paper towels over hand dryers in restrooms. I’d wager the other 37% choose what they thought was the right answer. Each time I use them, I always end up with cold, wet hands and if I’m forced to stand in front of them, water all over my clothes. I try to stand to the side and I one time watched the blower fling water all the way across the restroom–no small feat. Surely that wet, slick floor I left behind creates a terrible safety hazard. Heck, there is even a dispute about how much more environmentally friendly they are (if full cost environmental impact accounting is to be believed). My problem stems from the simple fact that they largely fail at their stated purpose, that of drying my hands quickly.
So if they are mostly hated, then why do companies implement them? Well, to put it bluntly it’s not like you are going to shop somewhere else because they have hand dryers there. If studies are to believed then I guess companies can save 99% of the cost of paper towels in a single year.
So what does this have to do with risk? Hand dryers (to me at least) are a clear case of substituting risk tolerances. Allow me to explain. When you are done washing your hands, your primary goal is to dry your hands and get out of there as quickly as you can. You are probably not thinking about saving the world with your hand drying choice or even saving money for the business you are at. Your priority here (I often equate priorities with risk) is in direct conflict with the host company. In fact, if its your employer that has the hand dryer, then it means they’d rather you stand there for some indeterminable time until your hands are dry versus getting back to your post as quickly as possible. Okay so may you save a minute or two (I think most people just give up and wipe their hands on their pants, defeating the purpose), but multiply that by how many trips per day times how many people and its no small investment (I used to work with process engineers that thought about stuff like this all the time).
You may be thinking that I’m neurotic about this, and you may be right, but when you think about risk constantly like me you start to see it everywhere. And the hand dryer scenario is not unique. While waiting in line at IKEA at closing time one night, someone in our party asked why they didn’t open up more lanes. The answer is simple–what’s the odds that after spending the last couple hours shopping and schlepping your purchases to the sole closing-time cashier that you would abandon them and sacrifice the last few hours of your life. Slim to none I’d say. Here too is a risk-based decision. They are accepting marginal dissatisfaction in order to save some money on a second or third cashier.
These sorts of trade-offs happen all the time and we hardly notice them. Usually they involve discounting the value of time–yours and mine–in favor of cost avoidance. I try and make these scenarios plain in my mind. I want to know when the value of my time has been discounted. I have less personal tolerance for my time being wasting and I often seek out scenarios where I pay a premium to have more personal time in my life.
How often has your personal risk tolerances been violated without your explicit knowledge? Perhaps its time to manage your resources better…
The Risk Dr ® 