Feeling Ephemeral

My company renewed the lease for the Irvine division’s current building. As part of that renewal, the property owner agreed to make some significant upgrades to the facility. This included modernizing the bathrooms.

The upstairs bathroom remodel is done. All of the stalls, urinals, soap dispensers, and faucets now use electronic eyes to automatically flush, dispense soap, or turn on/off the water. For the first week after they opened this restroom (and shut down the downstairs for its remodeling), everything was great.

For the last week, however, I have been feeling somewhat invisible. Standing at the urinal or sitting in a stall, without moving any significant amount, suddenly the toilet or urinal will flush. I’ve asked and there are no timers on these things—they are only supposed to flush once you leave the eye’s radius. At first I thought I might be doing something to cause this; leaning just far enough out of the way, backing up just enough that the eye registers me as leaving, etc. But over the last few days at work I made a point of remaining very still—and the same thing happens.

I asked a few friends if they experienced anything similar, and all have said no. The facilities only flush when they are well away from it. If anything, they comment the opposite direction—they worry the facilities won’t flush at all and use the manual override just in case.

It is to the point where I cannot help but feel a little ephemeral. Why won’t these devices register me appropriately? Why do they insist I am no longer there?