Watch your fly
NEW YORK | The tile under the urinals in the Arrivals Building [at JFK Airport] has that familiar lemony tinge; rubber soles stick to it. Over in Amsterdam, the tile under Schiphol's urinals would pass inspection in an operating room.
But nobody notices.
What everybody does notice is that each urinal has a fly in it. Look harder, and the fly turns into the black outline of a fly, etched into the porcelain.
"It improves the aim," says Aad Kieboom. "If a man sees a fly, he aims at it."
Mr. Kieboom, an economist, directs Schiphol's own building expansion. His staff conducted fly-urinal trials and found that etchings reduce spillage by 8 percent. The Dutch will transfer the technology to New York.
"We will put flies in the urinals -- yes," Jan Jansen said in a back office at the Arrivals Building. He is the new Dutch general manager. "It gives a guy something to think about. That's the perfect example of process control."
His New York public relations attendant tittered. "Fine, laugh at me," Mr. Jansen says. "It works." Passed along by Nicole Gervais from the Wall Street Journal (05/13/97). This was in a front-page article on the Dutch company Schiphol's plans for revamping the Arrivals Building at JFK Airport in New York.
Copyright © 1998 John Mahoney/Log Cabin Chronicles/12.98 |