Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Packaging is driving me crazy

I just spent ten minutes of my lunch hour wrestling with a fucking packet of sliced ham because I couldn't get the fucking thing to open. I found the little tab on the edge of the seal that is supposed to make it easy to open but that didn't help. I pulled and pulled to no avail. Admittedly, the fact that I am a weak little girly-man was a big contributor to the problem but still, the packaging was ridiculous.

This isn't even the usual problem with fucked-up food packaging. Usually, the biggest issue is that the seal starts to come off but then it rips when you've partially opened it. Leaving the remains of the seal in place makes getting the contents out a bastard of a job but trying to rip off the remainder of the seal ends up taking forever and making a horrible fucking mess.

In this case my solution was to find a sharp knife and cut open the packet. This solved my initial problem (now I could actually get at the ham to make a sandwich) but now I can't re-seal the packet. So now the ham's probably going to go off before I finish eating it. Hopefully I won't continue to eat it after it's gone off - that never works out well.

And what is it with some drinks you buy having a seal under the lid? This would be less frustrating if (a) you could get the fucking seals off without spilling drink everywhere and (b) if all drinks had the seal. When only some drinks have the seal, you never know whether or not you have to unscrew the fucking lid before having a drink.

They go to all the trouble of putting one of those pop top lids on the bottle (this usually happens with bottled water and/or sports drinks) which makes the bottle convenient. But then you pop the top and nothing comes out. If you're like me you spend a few seconds sucking on the bottle wondering what the fucking problem is. If you're lucky, you're smarter than me and this isn't such an issue.

And don't even get me started on the packaging used on non-food items like electronic gadgets. That double thick plastic they use that's triple sealed along the edges just will not fucking come apart when you want to open the packet. I've read that this is an anti-theft measure but seriously, can't they cut us consumers some slack? We're not all thieves, some of us would like to be able to open products after we buy them.

When I hear stories of how Cheney and his cronies at Halliburton fucked over the soldiers in Iraq by taking billions of dollars to "outfit" them and then not giving them adequate (or any) armour, I think "send them some of this packaging plastic". Wrap their vehicles in this stuff and no amount of IED's are going to cause any problems. Mind you, there would be some issue with getting the soldiers out of the vehicles once you'd sealed them in but you can't have everything.

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