Trapped. In a Car Wash.

     The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
     --George Bernard Shaw 

Yesterday I was trapped in a car wash. Not a sentence I ever thought I'd say. But there it is. The wash cycle was finished, the entrance door behind me was closed, and so was the exit door in front of me. I was trapped.

It started innocently enough. I needed a car wash. In fact, after driving through all the snow and muck and salt around here in the last few weeks, I almost couldn't see out my side windows. It was time. Unfortunately, the gas station car wash I usually use was not working. Frozen, they said. So I ended up at a stand-alone car wash place I'd never been to before.

The actual car wash went smoothly enough. Drive Forward. Pre-wash Soak. Double Rinse. Then the doors opened, the dryer started and I inched forward. It took a few seconds before the windshield was clear enough that I could see how much time was left on the dry cycle – and it was much more than I expected. I had time, I reasoned, to let the dryer do a better job on my hood, so I backed up a little bit.

And the exit doors closed.

Since I was trapped, I took a few seconds to look around and assess my plight. Now that I was back behind the dryer apparatus, and my car wasn't covered with water and soap, I could see that there was, in fact, a sign: Do Not Back Up During Dry Cycle. Malfunction Will Occur. The sign was big enough, but it was low to the ground, and when I made the decision to back up, it was very much behind me. Not so much useful at that point.

On the wall, taped to a utility panel of some kind, was a hand-written note with an emergency phone number. This would seem to qualify, so I called the number and ended up leaving a message on an automated, nondescript voicemail. Uncertain there was really anyone even on the other end of that line, I started calling nearby friends who might help rescue me.

In the middle of my first help-me conversation, the car wash attendant returned my call. There's a button, he said, on the wall. Get out of your car, push it, and the door will open. The button was on the same utility panel that housed the hand-written emergency number. There was even a(nother) hand-written sign above the button that said Push to Open.

It's worth noting that I had seen that Push to Open sign on the panel and thought, "That's of no help; I don't need to open that utility panel…" I assumed it was directed to technicians or employees of the car wash. Now that I knew the inadequately labeled button should have said Push to Open Doors, I walked over and pushed it. The doors opened, and I drove home – laughing at the absurdity of it all as the final rinse water still on my bumper began to freeze.

I'm pretty sure the attendant man thought I was an idiot. There were signs, after all. Do Not Back Up. Push to Open. But they were poorly placed and poorly worded. Would it have killed anyone to place that warning beyond the dryer, maybe near the timer, visible at the point where people actually make the decision to back up? Or could someone have added the word Doors to the hand-written Push to Open note? It probably wouldn't have been that difficult, but I'm guessing no one thought of it. 

And this, my friends, is exactly why we need technical writers and folks who study usability.