I find there’s three types of hand dryers: the standard kind that blows really hot air to evaporate the water, the ones that blow strongly to push the water off the hands, and the ones that are supposed to do one of these but don’t. At my university almost all of the hand dryers fall into the third category.
Why are hand dryers like this, and am I somehow drying my hands wrong?
It’s the rubbing-your-hands part. If you do it right you get the wet under the air in frequent enough intervals that your hands get pretty dry.
Dry enough that they’d finish on their own in the next 60 seconds. But since I’m out the door by then I’ve already wiped the rest on my shirt.
This is the answer. If you flick as much water off your hands as possible into the sink first, it takes like 10 seconds