Morning Thoughts: What's Wrong With Things Actually WORKING?

Wednesday, May 24th, 2023

Well, I didn't quite manage to get this edition of "Morning Thoughts" out in the morning but I got pretty close. Or, at least, I got closer than usual!

It's a bit of a farce, I know.

The Little Things...

It's often the little things that break the proverbial camel's back. Similarly, it's often the little things that cause me to become seriously irritated at something.

In this case, slicing myself an English muffin for breakfast... no not slicing, toasting myself an English muffin for breakfast and discovering that the machine at the bakery plant that's supposed to neatly pre-score the muffin — so you can easily break it in half — is so off center that there's just a little piece of one corner and then 95% of the muffin somewhere left intact.

One of my pet peeves in life is poorly designed stuff or things that don't work the way they're supposed to. This is generally exacerbated when the situation is clearly a result of somebody trying to take shortcuts or "do the cheap thing" on their product.

The "Price" of Frustration

That made me pause to ponder the unlikely question of what the "price" of frustration and annoyance might be.

You look at some commercial item and the manufacturer able to sell that product for $19.95 because they took a number of shortcuts but those shortcuts resulted in a somewhat sketchy product.

Of course, many producers will swear on a stack of Bibles that the most important thing is that they can sell it for $19.95. In my own personal case, I'd gladly pay a little more — let's say $22.95 — for the same product if it were only made properly so I didn't have to deal with the frustration of "shit that doesn't work."

So in that case you could say that the "price" of frustration for me is $3.00. I don't know if that logic really holds but it seems to make sense to me!

This Cheese is Grated... on My Nerves!

A good example is the "easy reseal" packages of grated cheese.

They're kind of like a Ziploc bag which is definitely kind of convenient, but they almost never work. I am buying a 2 lb economy size bag of grated cheese so I'm not going to eat it all in one sitting, which means I'm going to have to store it for a while.

This bag of cheese costs almost $8.00 and I'm sure they worked really hard to keep the price down, but I also know what the cost of a real Ziploc bag that really works is and I would gladly pay an extra 15 cents for my 2lb bag of cheese in order to not have it dry out because the zip-up mechanism doesn't work!.

Scheduled Defectiveness and Profiteering Greed?

Of course, the cynic in me looks at the whole thing and says "well, they probably DESIGNED a shitty closing mechanism because then the cheese actually will dry out and people will look at the cheese and declare 'this is shitty dried up cheese' and throw half the bag away and thereby the manufacturer will be able to sell more cheese."

Which, in turn, is one of the aspects of capitalism I really hate. The constant obsession with scratching every tiny fraction of a cent of profit out of every single situation... but not necessarily to the consumer's benefit or even to the workers who make it... but purely to the benefit of the corporate bottom line.

Remember, kids, the entire objective of a corporation is to maximize profit, generally to the exclusion of all other considerations.

Lighten up, Dude!

There are probably quite a few who will read this (and thank you, if you actually did!), roll their eyes and think I should just lighten up, grab a knife and slice the wretched muffin, myself.

Which is, of course, what I did!

But it also misses the point. That point being, why should we always just "accept" shoddiness, defectiveness and inferior quality purely in service of filling corporate coffers? We shouldn't.

OK, glad to have that load off my shoulders! Thanks for stopping by, and have a great rest of your week!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

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Created at 2023-05-24 14:06 PST
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