There is disagreement over the precise date of invention of the modern flush toilet, but it seems that designs began to proliferate towards the end of the 18th century. You'd have thought that over 200 years would be enough time to ensure that modern designs are free of faults, would you not? Well, you would be wrong.
Take a look at this toilet bowl:
You can see that, in contrast to the normal steep angle, the bowl shelves backwards from the rim at an extremely shallow angle. The inside surface of the bowl is therefore only a very short distance below the level of the seat. It has obviously been designed either by a woman or by a man with an extremely small penis. When I take a dump in it, my penis, which is of normal size, touches the inside of the bowl. I find this most unpleasant.
Here is another example of a toilet designed for the dickless:
No, there isn't a blockage in the outlet pipe. The bloody thing is designed like that. The water level in the pan is extremely high anyway, and when you piss in it it rises even higher. Now guess what happens when I take a dump in it? That's right, my penis dangles in the lake of filth. Revolting.
If it was down to me, both of these toilets would be removed pronto and replaced with toilets of normal design. Unfortunately, it's not down to me. These toilets are the defecation facilities provided in what is otherwise a very pleasant holiday let. It does rather tend to put a downer on the holiday when you have to spend much of the time with your arsehole superglued shut because you can't fucking well take a dump in comfort. Every year I hope that some careless holidaymaker will have managed to smash at least one of the toilets and thereby forced its replacement, but toilet bowls are pretty resistant to accidental destruction and it hasn't happened yet.
Here is a toilet which is crap in a different way. See if you can identify the flush:
No handle, is there? No lever. No chain. No sticky-out bit. The flush is in fact this stupid fucking button thing:
The photo shows the flush button in its quiescent position. To activate it, you have to push it deeply into a hole, as shown here:
It requires quite a hefty shove to work it, and as you can see it sinks quite a long way below the surround. This means that unless your fingernails are cut right back to the pink bit - leaving you nothing to scratch with - it's easy to inadvertently catch your fingernail on the surround as you press the button, and bend it painfully backwards. A woman with long nails would be breaking them every bloody time. Pain for no gain. Why the flying fuck doesn't the button stand proud of the surround, so this problem wouldn't arise? Bloody stupid thoughtless design.
And it's worse than that. Sensible flush designs connect the trigger directly to the flush valve with a wire hook. There's very little to go wrong, and if the hook breaks or corrodes you can replace it with any piece of stiff wire, such as a bit of wire coathanger, that happens to be lying around. Not this fucking thing. Look what's behind the button:
How's this for fucking stupid pointless overcomplication? The button operates a bellows thing (inside the blue capsule bit) which is connected to another bellows on the flush valve by that piece of plastic tubing. What do you do when the bellows springs a leak? You can't fix it with random household junk. First you have to locate a supplier of stupid fucking pneumatic flush mechanisms (much easier said than done; if you try Google it finds this page long before it finds any suppliers) and then you have to pay money for parts to fix something which you could fix for free if it had been designed properly. And if it happens to fail at the weekend then you have to spend the whole weekend pissing in the garden because you can't flush the bog. What kind of mindless idiot thinks up this shit?
After using the above toilet, this sink is provided to wash your hands in:
It's not a very deep sink and the sides slope up at a relatively shallow angle compared to most sinks. Because it's shallow, you have to fill it right up. Because it's shallow-angled, and full right up, when you wash your hands in it it tends to slop water over the edge and down your trousers so it looks like you've pissed yourself. This demonstrates what a bloody stupid design it is. There are millions of sinks around which don't have this problem. This sink is only good for beating its designers round the head with in order to try and knock some sense into them. Or just kill them and allow more sensible designers to take their place.
Oh, and the soap is only staying where it is because I squidged it firmly down onto the porcelain. If you just place it there normally it immediately slides off into the sink - you have to squidge it down so it sticks. A sink that doesn't have a proper place to put the soap, what a fucking useless piece of shit.
