Bad Showers/Flood Warning

Today, my friend Tom started a new occasional series called "Design Whine" on his blog. Apparently, he'll be using it to complain [even more than he already does] about poorly designed products or websites. With a name like "Design Whine", it definitely does what it says on the tin. The inaugural post was about the shower door at his CTO's house, which (SPOILER ALERT) he finds to be tremendously inconvenient. (NOTE: You probably have no knowledge of/opinions about your coworkers' showers, but Tom's one of those crazy entrepreneurial types that are always sleeping at each other's homes between marathon 100-hour coding sessions and making widgets. Or "using the list". Or whatever it is that they do. I'd better get paid for this ringing endorsement.)

Anyway!

Tom makes some solid points about his knob-less shower door woes. And I have some experience with infuriating bathing-related ingress/egress situations myself, though I didn't have the presence of mind to document the after-effects of their horribleness. Meet the shower in my dad's (former) flat in London:

Dun-dun-DUNNNNNNNNN!

There are 4 compelling reasons why this is the worst shower ever. I'll break it down for you:

#1: The door, or lack thereof. 

You're welcome for the helpful turquoise outlining.

The area outlined in this picture is the door. It's not the front half of the door, or one pane of the door, it is the ENTIRE door. Note how it helpfully ends about halfway across the tub. Handy! 

#2: The hinges on the door. 

For the life of me, I don't know why there are hinges on the half-door at all. You'd have to be 4 feet wide to need to open the half-door. Nonetheless, the hinges are there. Not only are they there, but they are conveniently designed such that the dripping wet door swings right out over the bath mat, tile, and toilet! Not that this would be noticeable, with so much water pooled on the floor anyway, what with half the shower being completely open and everything. Still. 

#3: The mirror.

Because what's more fun than getting to see all of your hideous imperfections displayed like you were Figure 2-A in a high school anatomy textbook while you bathe? NOTHING THAT'S WHAT! I've never seen a mirror *in* a shower before. There is a very good reason for that, let me tell you. Then again, I guess the mirror was really good if you happened to be on a diet. It's a guaranteed appetite-killer for all but the most dedicated narcissists.  

#4: The Great Wall of China Tub.

For the purposes of illustration, I'm going to use the *other* perspective here...

Listed measurements are a rough estimate

As you can see, the edge of the tub was roughly the same height as the bottom of the sink basin. I think we can all agree that that is unnecessarily high, especially given the fact that the base of the tub (not pictured) is only one or two inches higher than the bathroom floor. All this is bad enough, but when you factor in the huge puddle of water that forms at that end of the room (since there's basically no door), the whole experience of exiting the shower becomes a topsy turvy Slip 'n Slide from hell.

In conclusion, Tom, I sympathize with your horrific "trapped in the shower" ordeal, and I hope you get it resolved soon. And though this is a contest no one would want to win, I'm pretty sure I just did. In the immortal words of Teen Witch's Polly, Top That. (Look how funky I am!)