For the bacillophobia, chiraptophobia & ergophobia in YOU =+)
February 27, 2006 THE OTTAWA CITIZEN PAGE: A12
My office is a public-health hazard zone
Ron Petrie
Regina Leader-Post
Ick. Eeeyew. Gross.
Gingerly my fingers type today.
Yuck. With every keystroke of the letters to make the words to make the column, I feel more and more -- what's the word? -- filthy, unclean, dirty.
And not merely because I am practising journalism, either. Today's creepie-crawlies come to me courtesy of Grand and Toy.
No, not the hip-hop comedy duo of the early 1990s. You're thinking of Kid 'N' Play. Grand and Toy is the big office supply company that last week launched a national campaign to raise awareness of the fact that people who use its products are all diseased gomers.
As a journalist, I am, of course, paraphrasing the upshot of the Grand and Toy campaign to promote healthier workplaces. According to the company, modern office equipment is host to various types of bacteria, viruses and other single-cell life forms, and all office furnishings, too, not just, as long known, the chairs at the boardroom table.
Germ infestation, as measured in microbes per square inch (metric: kilobes per hectare) run from a level of 69 at the photocopier to 1,679 on the computer mouse to 3,295 on the keyboard to 25,127 on the telephone, Grand and Toy reported.
In the final analysis, in what is known scientifically as "the money stat," much publicity was generated by the finding that:
The office desktop has 400 times the germs of a toilet seat!
And yet most life insurance firms still rate the occupational hazards of an assistant procurement manager as less than those of a lumberjack, if you can imagine.
(Nowhere did the study specify the exact gender of the benchmark toilet seat, male or female, up or down. I'm guessing researchers pinched it from the women's washroom. Men's public toilets are germ-free. Not even microbes can survive that environment.)
Where all this news inconveniences me, specifically, is the part about the 3,295 germs per keyboard. Exactly what ailments, syndromes, maladies and afflictions I am right now contracting as I gingerly type away is anybody's guess. Moreover, my guess is better than anybody else's, obviously, in that I am the one who coughed, sneezed, smeared and, in one unfortunate episode, while writing about my Saskatche-wan farmboy's fear of heights, nose-bled those germs all over the keyboard in the first place.
I am constantly infecting myself. The receding hair line, the fading memory, the weakening eyesight, the loss of zip in the old doo-dah -- no wonder I suffer so many recurring personal ailments. Stupid, stupid microbes.
Better I am here at the office, though, than back home, typing this column on my (my?! ha! try their) personal computer and getting my digits all mucked up with the residual germs of public school, minor hockey, dance class, nostrils and wherever else the 32 fingers and eight thumbs of nine-year-old triplets and a six-year-old brother venture.
Chicken pox, mumps, tummy aches -- the diseases likely borne by the home-office keyboard are almost too many to enumerate, and include: whooping cough, cooties, and definitely whatever is carried by those parts per million of rodent hair that federal law allows in peanut butter.
As with most issues, this latest medical concern comes down to a matter of personal choice in health care.* (* Not available in Canada.) You, yourself, have to decide which of the following medical charts are preferable:
Symptoms from not giving a tinker's dang about office germs: Sniffles, sneezes, coughs, intestinal pain, sore throat, fever.
Symptoms from way too much thought about office germs: Scrubbing, cleaning, wiping, obsessive scrubbing, compulsive cleaning, relentless wiping, latex gloves, paper masks, bacillophobia, chiraptophobia and ergophobia (the debilitating fears of germs, touching and work, respectively), facial tissues stapled to entire body, empty tissue boxes worn over shoes to ward off floor crawlies, darting eyeballs, chills, paranoia, unemployment, or promotion to boardroom management.
Your call.
Ron Petrie is a columnist for Regina's Leader-Post.
My office is a public-health hazard zone
Ron Petrie
Regina Leader-Post
Ick. Eeeyew. Gross.
Gingerly my fingers type today.
Yuck. With every keystroke of the letters to make the words to make the column, I feel more and more -- what's the word? -- filthy, unclean, dirty.
And not merely because I am practising journalism, either. Today's creepie-crawlies come to me courtesy of Grand and Toy.
No, not the hip-hop comedy duo of the early 1990s. You're thinking of Kid 'N' Play. Grand and Toy is the big office supply company that last week launched a national campaign to raise awareness of the fact that people who use its products are all diseased gomers.
As a journalist, I am, of course, paraphrasing the upshot of the Grand and Toy campaign to promote healthier workplaces. According to the company, modern office equipment is host to various types of bacteria, viruses and other single-cell life forms, and all office furnishings, too, not just, as long known, the chairs at the boardroom table.
Germ infestation, as measured in microbes per square inch (metric: kilobes per hectare) run from a level of 69 at the photocopier to 1,679 on the computer mouse to 3,295 on the keyboard to 25,127 on the telephone, Grand and Toy reported.
In the final analysis, in what is known scientifically as "the money stat," much publicity was generated by the finding that:
The office desktop has 400 times the germs of a toilet seat!
And yet most life insurance firms still rate the occupational hazards of an assistant procurement manager as less than those of a lumberjack, if you can imagine.
(Nowhere did the study specify the exact gender of the benchmark toilet seat, male or female, up or down. I'm guessing researchers pinched it from the women's washroom. Men's public toilets are germ-free. Not even microbes can survive that environment.)
Where all this news inconveniences me, specifically, is the part about the 3,295 germs per keyboard. Exactly what ailments, syndromes, maladies and afflictions I am right now contracting as I gingerly type away is anybody's guess. Moreover, my guess is better than anybody else's, obviously, in that I am the one who coughed, sneezed, smeared and, in one unfortunate episode, while writing about my Saskatche-wan farmboy's fear of heights, nose-bled those germs all over the keyboard in the first place.
I am constantly infecting myself. The receding hair line, the fading memory, the weakening eyesight, the loss of zip in the old doo-dah -- no wonder I suffer so many recurring personal ailments. Stupid, stupid microbes.
Better I am here at the office, though, than back home, typing this column on my (my?! ha! try their) personal computer and getting my digits all mucked up with the residual germs of public school, minor hockey, dance class, nostrils and wherever else the 32 fingers and eight thumbs of nine-year-old triplets and a six-year-old brother venture.
Chicken pox, mumps, tummy aches -- the diseases likely borne by the home-office keyboard are almost too many to enumerate, and include: whooping cough, cooties, and definitely whatever is carried by those parts per million of rodent hair that federal law allows in peanut butter.
As with most issues, this latest medical concern comes down to a matter of personal choice in health care.* (* Not available in Canada.) You, yourself, have to decide which of the following medical charts are preferable:
Symptoms from not giving a tinker's dang about office germs: Sniffles, sneezes, coughs, intestinal pain, sore throat, fever.
Symptoms from way too much thought about office germs: Scrubbing, cleaning, wiping, obsessive scrubbing, compulsive cleaning, relentless wiping, latex gloves, paper masks, bacillophobia, chiraptophobia and ergophobia (the debilitating fears of germs, touching and work, respectively), facial tissues stapled to entire body, empty tissue boxes worn over shoes to ward off floor crawlies, darting eyeballs, chills, paranoia, unemployment, or promotion to boardroom management.
Your call.
Ron Petrie is a columnist for Regina's Leader-Post.