Friday, June 17, 2005

Most Frustrating Invention

I'd like to present an award. I will call this award the "Most Frustrating Invention" award. It is given to the invention that is proven frustrating to use, under all circumstances, without any necessity need to be so.

This years award goes to... ... the person who invented that hard plastic packaging (common around smaller electronic parts, but also other items) that is completely sealed necessitating the use of scissors or some other sharp blade-like object.

This invention scores very high in two categories. In the technical category, it's just plain impossible to open. It's especially difficult as the packaging gets smaller. Scissors never seem to be able to leverage the right angle to cut into the edges (without absolutely mangling everything inside), and a knife, well, usually involves me slicing either myself or some surface I'd rather not damage.

In the other category, isn't it ALWAYS the case that you REALLY want to get whatever is in the package. It's something you've either been waiting for forever, or it's just really cool and you really want to get it open. But NoooooooOOOoo... all you do is get MORE frustrated as it takes you longer and longer to get the darn thing open. This afternoon, I spent no less than 10 minutes attempting to open one such package.

Now in fairness, I'm nearly convinced that this is completely intentended to be so frustratingly impossible to open. Probably so that if the item is on the store shelf, people can't just rip it open and steal what's inside (at least without being incredibly obvious that they're doing so). BUT... what about the consumer? AHHHH! Obviously nobody cares.

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