Daily Dose of Common Sense

At the mall one morning recently, I overheard two parents talking. As our small kids were all riding kiddie rides, one mother told the other that her son was sick that day and he wouldn’t be in pre-school that afternoon. She wanted to keep him out of school to “you know, be considerate.”

How about keeping your kid home from the mall, too? If your son or daughter is too sick to go to school, does it really make sense to let them spread germs at the mall? When my kids are too sick for school, that means no galavanting around town, either. Kids are everywhere, and sick kids can spread germs as easily at the mall as they can at school.

What’s wrong with some parents?

Photo courtesy of Flickr: Mykl Roventine

Ever driven an ashtray? If you’ve rented a car that has been driven by a heavy smoker, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The smell lingers and gets stale. It’s awful. Hurray for the two major car rental companies who just announced they will ban smoking in their rental cars. It’s about time.

Beginning Oct. 1, Avis and Budget will become the first major rental-car companies to ban smoking in their entire North American fleets and to impose a cleaning fee of up to $250 on customers who smoke in the cars.

“The No. 1 request we get is for a smoke-free car,” says John Barrows, spokesman of the Avis Budget Group, the parent company. He says a common customer complaint is a car that smells of smoke, adding, “We’re addressing both concerns.”

Barrows says employees who drive the vehicles are no longer allowed to smoke and the cars will undergo a new inspection upon return. He says it costs the company more to clean a smoky car, because it often has to be taken out of service longer.

Now, we’re not saying people don’t have a right to smoke. They do. But, it’s one thing to smoke in your own car, where the stink is your own problem. It’s a whole other ball of odor to smoke in a car that doesn’t belong to you. What you do in a rental car affects a lot of other people. And, smoke is one of the worst pervasive odors. That smell cannot be completely removed. Ever.

Just ask hotels. The smell of cigarette smoke is so bad over time that you can’t even have non-smoking rooms next to smoking rooms. They had to create entire FLOORS where smoking is prohibited. And, a hotel employee once told me that in order to change a room from a smoking room to a non-smoking room, everything in the room had to be replaced: the furniture, the carpet, and even the wallpaper and/or paint.

So, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Just do it in your own space.

Photo courtesy of Flickr: johntrainor

Today’s common sense quote comes courtesy of an old friend, who happens to be wise beyond his years.

“There is little difference between a bathroom stall and a voting booth. One really shouldn’t try to hold conversations between them.”
–Constantine Soteriades via Facebook

Right on! LBJ famously used to host meetings while he was in the bathroom. Gross! Good if you want to make everyone super uncomfortable, I guess. But, for us regular folks, it’s best to not talk to others while doing your business.

Photo courtesy of Flickr: ttarasiuk

A man in Florida claims he opened a can of Diet Pepsi, took a sip, and got a mouth full of rotting frog. Hmmmmm…. The FDA confirms the can contained amphibian parts, but I’m sure skeptical of how the frog got into the can in the first place. Chances are, based on the packaging process, the couple put it in there themselves. If not, the frog’s presence would have to be the result of a worker placing it in the can deliberately. Seems unlikely.

Most claims of this sort turn out to be hoaxes. Remember the woman who found a severed finger in her Wendy’s chili? Turned out the finger came from the husband’s friend, who lost it in an industrial accident. The big tip off? The finger hadn’t been cooked, so investigators smelled a scam.

The FDA has launched an investigation into how the frog got into the can. They have already checked the Pepsi bottling plant from where the can originated. No “adverse conditions or association to this problem” were found. Next, I assume they will be looking at the couple involved with a more discerning eye.

Speaking of the couple, they are seeking legal advice. Even if it were a legit case–which I doubt–is suing the company appropriate? To me, it just smacks of a desperate play to extort money from a big corporation.

So, drink up! The chemical additives and acid in the soda will do far more harm than anything else you might find in there.

Photo courtesy of Flickr: sailorbill

Just spotted a woman in my local Target store wearing a homemade, airbrushed tank top that read “Wet Pussy.” Um, OK. I’m sure at times it is wet. Other times, perhaps dry or irritated. What if it were itchy? Would you put that on your clothing?

I would have snapped a picture of said shirt, but trust me–this did not look like the kind of woman who would take kindly to being the subject of a surreptitious photo. I just needed to buy my Go-Gurt and orange juice without getting punched.

I thought I was pretty progressive when it came to women and their sexuality. But, this one was too much for me. It’s not just a matter of being comfortable with your body and with sex. This is a fashion statement (and I do mean statement!) that doesn’t just cross the line of good taste–it rockets past the line at hyper-speed.

So, to recap:

Family store + inappropriate clothing = bad idea

Now, who wants to let that woman know?

We use water every day without thinking about it. In fact, we can’t live without it. As you’ve probably heard at some point, we can survive for a few weeks without food but only a few days without water. Although water may seem abundant to people in developed countries, globally speaking, potable water is an extremely limited resource.

In fact, lack of access to clean water claims 4 million lives a year–roughly the population of Los Angeles.

So while more fortunate folks don’t have to think about water consumption, just a few quick facts may provide the incentive we all need to think about water as a resource, and to use it accordingly.

• Every 15 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease.
• The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.
• A five-minute shower in an American household will use more water than a person living in a developing world will use in a whole day.
• It takes over 2,900 gallons of water to produce a pound of coffee.
• On average, women in Africa and Asia have to walk 3.7 miles to collect water.

It’s unrealistic to think that few alarming factoids will immediately impact our daily water consumption.

Or, is it?

If every person in the United States chose just one way to save 1 gallon of water each day, we would conserve 307,183,727 gallons per day.

Pretty impressive, don’t you think?

To see water footprints check out this chart:
http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/trans0309walkthisway.html

To educate yourself about the global water crisis:
http://water.org/

To find ways that might work for you to reduce your water consumption:
http://www.wateruseitwisely.com/100-ways-to-conserve/index.php

Photo courtesy of Flickr: darkpatator

A study found that men who do cooking, cleaning, and other household chores have the highest chances of finding someone to settle down with. Women around the world respond, “You betcha!”

Researchers found a direct connection between marriage and cohabitation rates in countries where views on the roles of men and women are more equal. In these areas, responsibilities for housework and child-rearing are considered a partnership, not just a woman’s duty.

The study found that women living in less egalitarian countries were between 20 and 50 per cent less likely to be living with a man than comparable women living in a more egalitarian country. For instance, the findings would predict that the average British woman was 8.5 percentage points more likely than a similar Australian woman to be in a live-in relationship.

The countries with the highest levels of male participation were Norway, Sweden, Great Britain and the United States (whoo!). At the bottom of the list were Japan, Germany, Austria, and Australia. What’s going on with the Aussies? Are they as old-fashioned as the statistics make it seem?

This study also had one other nugget of note: while egalitarian men fare better with the opposite sex, egalitarian women are seen as a handicap. Women want men who help out, but men want women who will take care of it all. Talk about a double standard.

Guys, here are some ideas to get you started:

• SavvyMiss.com has a great list of Basic Cooking Terms & Tips for the Cooking Inept
• You can’t go wrong with Betty Crocker Cooking Basics: Recipes and Tips to Cook with Confidence on Amazon.com
• Tips for men and housework can be found here at Men and Housework: We Can’t Clean What We Can’t See
• This one is probably for women, but it’s a book called The Lazy Husband: How to Get Men to Do More Parenting and Housework

Photo courtesy of Flickr: eyeliam

In a massive common sense fail, a Burger King manager in Missouri asked mother Jennifer Frederich and her six-month old baby to leave his restaurant. The offense? The baby had no shoes on. The manager cited public health code, which mandates that people wear shoes in places where food is prepared and sold. But, a six-month old? Come on–they’re not even walking yet.

“I just looked at him and said, ‘That’s my daughter.  She doesn’t own shoes.  She’s only six months old,’” said Frederich. 

Frederich says she went on to make the case that, “She doesn’t walk, so she’s not touching the ground.  There is no reason for her to have shoes on.”

The mother, who was clearly baffled by the request, tried to accommodate the manager by putting socks on her child. The manager said that was not enough and asked them to leave.

Burger King headquarters has since apologized to the family and offered them a free meal. A complimentary Whopper seems like paltry compensation for such a PR blunder. Couldn’t they at least have gotten to meet this guy?

Photo courtesy of Flickr: zieak

We’re staying at a major beach resort that is very family oriented. We have two little kids, so we always get lots of swim diapers. These are diapers that hold any accidents inside, therefore protecting others in the pool from contamination. All the public pools I’ve been to require them for small kids.

Well, yesterday I saw a mother playing with her tiny NAKED daughter in the pool. So, not only did the child not have on a swim diaper, the infant was completely naked. Yep, not even a swim suit was there as a barrier between an accident and the pool water. This was not a potty-trained kid and the child wasn’t old enough to talk any more than coos and giggles. But, there she was–butt naked in a hotel pool.

I was surprised no one from the hotel staff said anything to the parents. Isn’t it a matter of public safety?

The effects of feces, vomitus or a dead animal in a public pool can be serious, if not life-threatening to pool users especially children, the elderly and people with suppressed immune systems. Feces and vomitus material can contain large numbers of pathogenic (harmful) microorganisms.

Swim diapers are sold everywhere, including within the resort. So there’s no question of their availability. I’m not sure whether these parents were clueless or just rude. Putting a diaper on your young child in the pool seems like a no brainer.

Even if you’re one of the parents who play by the rules, don’t swallow pool water. You never know what’s in there.

If you’re a reader of this blog, you already know how we feel about cigarette butts.

So, imagine how happy I was today to pass a Japanese tourist discretely smoking and using this product. It’s a tiny portable ashtray with extinguisher. Genius!

Is it any wonder why the Japanese were just named the world’s best tourists?