For the past two months I have stopped doing something at work that I thought I would do for ever. I no longer flush the loo.

Nor does anyone else in the swanky refurbished London office building the Financial Times moved into in May. We can’t — there is no button to push. There isn’t even one of those sensors you can activate with the wave of a hand. Instead there is another type of detector device that craftily calculates when a flush is needed and delivers it with no apparent human intervention.

This is just one newfangled feature in an office full of sit-stand desks and kitchen taps that produce sparkling, still or boiled water. We also have those fancy Toto toilets with heated seats and water jets: we are owned by Japan’s Nikkei media company. But none of this has provoked as much discussion as the self-flushing nature of the loos.