Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Germs everywhere!

i have gone through quite some packs of these the past days. something you probably didnt want to know... ;) today i finally went in to work, but i still feel and look like someone who is sick. its going around, as many people in the lab apparently dont feel well. tim has a bit of a cold, but not nearly as bad as me.
i like these packs, arent they cute?! and the advice "wash your hands to keep the germs away" & "cover your mouth when you sneeze" is very american!! first time i arrived in the us i was surprised to see this advice everywhere in the restrooms at the airport. only to discover its plastered everywhere, not just at the airport! it falls into the same category to me as the sign in many restrooms (in restaurants, malls, hospitals, etc) thats says "employees must wash hands before returning to work". to me this all seems very logical, why do you need signs for that? do more people do it because of the signs? also, in my "welcoming information packet" when i first starting working here was a brochure entirely devoted to the art of washing hands... (with pictures and clear instructions on how to apply the soap, how to wash your hands, how to rinse and dry them...).
something you definitely do not see in the netherlands...i think americans are much more germophobic than the dutch. there is hand sanitizer everywhere here! literally everywhere! wipes for the carts in the supermarket, a pump at every counter (be it the bank, the supermarket, the hospital, the clothing shop, at customs at the airport). but i still got sick... ;)  (and yes, im getting extremely frustrated!! it just doesnt seem to end!!)

5 comments:

biebkriebels said...

Why are they so afraid for bacterias? I agree washing hands is no big deal here, everybody does so. A kind of civilization I think.

Manon said...

Maybe you started using to much of the hand sanitizer and got sick ;)
I really had to get used to the thinness of the tissues here. Must also be germ-related, a built-in safety mechanism: you have to toss the tissue away after one sneeze, 'cause there's no tissue left...

CaT said...

haha manon! i think this certainly could be the case, not enough exposure to everyday germs actually can make you sicker once finally do get exposed to a real one... but i dont like hand sanitizer, so i dont use it!!
interesting theory on the tissues... i thought it was just worse quality than back home... (i also dont like the cotton rounds or whatever you call them to remove make-up etc)

Kay said...

People started getting phobic about bacteria at some point and the result was antibacterial everything - wipes, cleaners, soaps. And because everyone flees to the doctor at the first signs of illness and demands antibiotics we've bred increasingly disease resistant strains of ick.

Jack said...

Even with all of those signs, I have read that only about one third of men wash their hands before leaving a restroom. Eeeeeooow!