... automatic flush toilets?

Do these things ever work the way they're supposed to?

If you're like me, you like to put a seat protector on the seat before you sit down. You pull that paper thing out of the holder on the wall, you unfold it, you pop out the center, you lay it down on the seat, the center tongue thing hangs down into the water, you try to make sure that it's balanced just so so that it doesn't fall in. You have it in place, you turn around, you take off your pants, you're about to sit down -- splooooosh! The thing flushes, dragging the seat protector in with it. You're in that halfway crouch, you haven't quite sat down, and you think, "Nuts! Now I have to go through the whole maneuver again." So you stand up, and this time your pants are already down, and you yank the seat protector out again, and you're all flustered and annoyed so you rip it as you're unfolding it, and meanwhile -- splooooosh! This time you have to wait to put the protector on, because if you put it on while the toilet is still flushing, it'll drag it down there again. Meanwhile, don't forget that you are in the bathroom for a reason, and now that your pants are off, what you need to do is that much closer to the surface. You're getting impatient. You're muttering at the toilet, "Come on, come on!" It finishes flushing, and you get the stupid thing on the seat again, and then you're faced with a dilemma: Do you do a quick spin move to try to fake out the sensor, or do you try to turn around reaaaaallly sloooooowly so that it doesn't think you're moving at all? Either way, you're matching your wits against the machine. You're thinking, "sure, this thing is built to detect motion, but maybe I'm good enough, maybe it won't detect MY motion." Or maybe you think "maybe I should put my hand over the sensor, so it can't detect anything at all" -- so you have one arm in front of you against the wall, and then you're trying to twist around so that that arm doesn't move but is somehow behind you, keeping in mind that your pants are still down around your ankles.

Some people, in fact, would rather give up at this point. They say, "you know what, I'd rather soil myself than finish this." This is where the impetus for the adult diaper industry originally came from. But if you get past that part, and you're finally sitting down and taking care of business, inevitably you are going to need to shift your weight, and -- splooooosh! There it goes again. Of course, those industrial-strength flushes have a way of throwing the water out of the bowl. Isn't that a great feeling? "Hmm, some of my own waste just splashed up onto my body." That has to be one of the greatest indignities of our human existence.

So you're sitting there, and you're trying not to make the thing go off again as you're tying up all the loose ends, and then you're done. You stand up, and... That's right, nothing happens. You're pulling up your pants, you're turning around, clearly you're moving quite a bit, yet this motion sensor, which up until now was so sensitive that it could tell when you shifted your weight from both cheeks to just one -- this motion sensor now refuses to sense any motion at all. You're waving at it, you're gyrating, you're doing a little dance, you're doing the whole put-your-hand-really-close-then-move-it-back-again thing... nothing. It's like the thing is taunting you. Or maybe it's bored, maybe these obvious movements are too easy to detect, and it's insulted that you'd expect it to react to something that simple. It's just sitting there, watching you, thinking, "What is this idiot going to do next?" You know it's mocking you.

Finally, you give up, and you reach over and push the little button. The toilet has now flushed a total of seven times since you entered the stall, and only once was it actually flushing something meaningful away. These things are intended for what, saving water?