Technology I Could Live Without

Dear Mr. Bright Idea:

I’m writing to you with regard to your invention - the automatic toilet flush. Let me first say to you congratulations on a great idea. Public restrooms are a cesspool of disease and bacteria and your efforts to reduce my exposure to them is much appreciated. However, I think you may need to go back to the drawing board with this thing. See the main problem with your device is that quite simply, it doesn’t work. Well to be fair I did come across one in the late 80’s that worked okay. Unfortunately since then I’ve found the functioning of your device to be quite inconsistent at best. By inconsistent I mean this thing is like a time bomb. It either goes off before I get to the toilet, while I’m on the toilet, two months later, or (once in a blue moon) when it’s supposed to. Because of this, every time I go into a bathroom stall and see one of these things I’m crippled with fear. In these troubled and uncertain times, the bathroom is the last place I should be feeling this way. You might be wondering why I’m writing to you now after all these years of dissatisfaction with your product. Well, I recently had a rather unfortunate encounter with your device. I will just say that it involved a toilet, my cell phone and your flushing device. The details here aren’t important; but I will say that my cell phone did not make it. What is also important for you to know is that this rather unfortunate series of events could have been prevented if your stupid toilet flush had actually worked when it was supposed to.

So as a concerned consumer I have a few questions for you. First, do you have a quality department where you manufacture these? If not, you should. If you already have one please fire them all immediately because they’re completely incompetent. Also, I’m wondering why these were rushed into production before you actually made sure they worked? What was the rush? This isn’t a cancer vaccine. Take a few extra days and get it right. Lives would not have been lost.

Let me say in closing once again how much I admire you as a visionary. But for the love of God man, fix this thing already before more losses are incurred.

Kind regards,