More of Life's Little Irritations

It's that issue again, those irritations that make life a misery. Like the difficult wrappings on such things as CDs and DVDs. I think I've mentioned this before elsewhere on this blog. These things are supposed to have a tag on them which you're supposed to pull and it allows the cellophane to tear and then release the wrapping. Not just those items, but the packet that teabags come in, particularly P.G. Tips. Then I have to ask, why is there cellophane on these packets in the first place? Is it a security thing, or what? But if you must have it, why make it so annoyingly difficult to remove?

Tops on bottles and jars: why do some have to be so difficult to open? Not every one you ever buy, but the occasional one which needs all your brute force to get it to twist open. Jars of marmalade, jam, and those ready-made sauces for pasta, bolognaise or whatever. You can put the car into a door jamb or something similar and that can often help, but usually if you use a sharp object like a knife to prick the cap it often releases the vacuum that keeps the product fresh and then the cap comes of easily. But what an ordeal to get the thing open! Does it really have to be that difficult to get into the product? They put a safety seal on these products, a central circle that you can see if it's been tampered with. Then there's those pump action bottles which hand-washing soap comes in. They are locked and your have to push the mechanism down and twist to get it to open. No always successfully.

In a lot of ways they are attempting to make packaging less wasteful. Why does toothpaste have to come in a box? Is it to protect the tube inside? Those ready meals that come in a nice little aluminium tray ready to pop in the oven or microwave might be convenient, but the clear cellophane that it's covered in can be another annoying thing to have to deal with. When the product is cooked, for example, a lasagne, you take it out of the oven carefully, making sure you don't burn yourself in the process, but then you have to peel back the cellophane. Not always easy because it's hot, there's never a nice little tab to pull to draw it back, so you have to use a knife to cut the cellophane and then tear off this covering, which never comes off in one nice clean piece, you always get several bits that get left on the container and are difficult to remove completely.

What about those drinks that come in little cardboard packets and with a straw attached? Usually sold for children, no doubt for school packed lunches. They can be a real problem to open. You need a pair of sharp scissors to penetrate the cardboard package, they give you a little tab which you have to cut, and impossible to tear with your fingers and then you have to stab the little hole with the straw, which never works, so the straw ends up bent and useless. Usually the straw is attached to the package with sticky tape and it's virtually impossible to remove. Just plain crazy pack design.

A Few More Little Niggles

I've written elsewhere on this blog about those little minuscule things that make life miserable. Those things that are rather like the bit of grit in your shoe which makes walking uncomfortable. Those little niggles that cause upset. You might refer to them as niggles.

One such would be, when you order a cup of tea and instead of it being made in a pot you get a mug or cup of boiled water with a teabag on a bit of string either already in it or you have to dip it into the water yourself. An American idea, I believe. Just not really very good service in my opinion. We had this when we went into a Wetherspoon's pub when we were in Salisbury recently (Wetherspoon's pubs are generally very good, but on this occasion, this was a real let-down.) this is how we had our tea presented to us. Is it much of an effort to have a decent pot of tea made with probably two teabags? Rather than several mugs of hot water? Then to add insult to injury, the milk was in those really awful little plastic containers with foil caps that are incredibly difficult to peel off. The white liquid inside is supposed to represent 'milk' but is more like thin white emulsion paint. Or that is the consistency of the liquid. Not that I've tasted emulsion paint, but you get my meaning. The jug of milk provided for the customer to put into my mug of tea was empty on this occasion and it took some considerable time for me to get a staff member to replenish the jug. The final mug of tea was so disgusting I couldn't drink it. It tasted awful. The milk is definitely not from a cow, or else the tea is made in a metal pot. You get a really nasty metallic taste, which is unpleasant, to say the least.

Other niggles? Having DVDs and CDs wrapped in cellophane, which is virtually impossible to remove because there is no tab or that strip of coloured paper which is supposed to aid release of the product inside. Why do these things have to be so over-wrapped? Some manufacturers would say, to make sure you receive the item in pristine condition. Fair enough, but do make it easier to remove. Then the products which arrive with a sticker on them, usually with a bar code on, which, when you come to wash it, is virtually impossible to remove without leaving a nasty residue on the item, which, even after several efforts at washing, still remains. This is most annoying on books or other paper items when you can't obviously wash it to remove the sticky residue. And after a while, anything else which comes near the item sticks to this nasty gooey mess.

It seems packaging of quite a few products causes all manner of problems. Toothpaste tubes which always have a tiny bit of toothpaste in them when they are almost empty and you can't quite manage to squeeze out. This has probably been solved with those stand-up pumps which are far better and there is never any toothpaste left when they are empty. Also, tubes which are made of plastic and not metal, which I presume the old style tubes, which don't have any left at the end of their useful life.
Then there's the annoyance caused by parking machines, plenty of which are to be found round and about Milton Keynes Central Shopping Centre. You put your coinage into the machine and to the correct value and there is always one which refuses to work and falls through and comes out of another slot. You continue to load the coins in, but still, the machine refuses to work. Usually, it's a £1 coin and these confounded machines DON'T GIVE CHANGE! Which is more than annoying. Why not? Is it too difficult to create a coin-operated machine which prints out tickets to give change? Just an excuse for the local Council to make even further cash out of parking your car.

For now, that's all the niggles I can find, but I'm sure I'll find some more and when I do come across any I'll mention on this blog.

Life's Little Niggles

There are quite a few little niggles I could mention as I go about my daily activities. What do I mean by a niggle? A fly in the ointment, a stone in your shoe? A minor hiccup? A spanner in the works of life? I'll try and explain a few I have come across. Such as having problems with opening packets, jars and bottles. Why do manufacturers insist on making it so difficult it get into the packets they put their products in? Such as teabags, particularly P.G. Tips. Why is it so hard to get through the cellophane wrap the boxes are covered in? They could put a pull-tag on the cellophane which means the covering comes off easily, but generally, no, there is never such a thing. Why cover the packets in this foul stuff in the first place? What is the point of it? It surely can't be to keep the teabags within dry, or can it? Then, once you actually get inside there is a sort of perforated flat, which you have to break into when you want to extract a teabag. They put a similar perforated section in boxes of paper tissues which are virtually impossible to break into and then you have to extract the tissues through a very thin opening, which means that several tissues get torn to threads in the process, most annoying when you have a cold, with a runny nose and want a tissue in a hurry. Going on from tissues, how about toilet rolls? How easy can it be for manufacturers to make a roll of toilet paper which are easy to start off when the roll is new? You go to the loo and then discover at the vital moment that the loo roll has run out so you hunt far and wide for a new roll and then have trouble getting the end of the roll to start because it so difficult to get hold of the end of the paper and when you do eventually find the end, it just disintegrates and becomes virtually useless. Ink cartridges for printers can be annoying. Not just the fiddly installation process, but the packages they come in can be very difficult to open. There again, they have to be covered in more cellophane and then you break your fingernails trying to open the packet and then the actual ink cartridges are wrapped in more cellophane. Another product which can be annoying to open are CD's which never come with a handy strip to pull which releases the enclosed CD from the confines of it's little plastic box. These boxes can be fiddly when it comes to getting the CD itself out as it's held inside with a weird little central 'hub' which has sort of plastic teeth on it. It can be quite difficult removing the CD from this 'hub' thing to such an extent that if you're not very careful you could damage the CD. And the 'teeth' of this 'hub' thing can break off very easily, because it's made of very fragile plastic which breaks off easily and if that happens it renders the thing useless, meaning the CD won't sit safely on it and so get damaged if the plastic case is dropped. If that's the case the whole case is useless.The same can be said of DVD cases and also trying to extract the confounded thing from a similar 'hub' which is as difficult to remove as a CD. You can break your fingernails if you have to try to open the plastic box the thing comes in which is just as annoying.

Butter and margarine comes in convenient plastic boxes. I know these products are more convenient than having blocks of butter which come in paper or foil which means you have to transfer them into butter dishes (do people do that today? I think my mother would have done that once upon a time, but that would have been in the 1970's.) These products also are handy because they spread easily from the fridge, but the little niggle I have is the horrible bit of paper they insist on inserting under the lid when you open it and sitting directly on top of the spread inside. What's the purpose of that? You just throw it away, or, if it's left inside, you have to lift it off every time you want to take out some of the spread.

Cellophane and plastic wrap seems to cause quite a few problems. Another example which often bugs me is what covers magazines. I have a couple of magazines which I subscribe to and they arrive by post. Getting into them can be difficult, but not necessarily opening them (again, not always come with a handy tag to 'pull' so the cellophane or plastic wrap will open easily, but if you're not careful you can tear the magazine within the packaging. On a couple of occasions the postman has shoved the magazine through our letterbox with such force that the magazine within the packaging is damaged or it may be it got damaged somewhere within the post office's sorting machinery. Then, once you've got inside the packaging and opened the magazine you often find a sheaf of leaflets which are annoying because you end up throwing them away. We recycle wherever possible, but generally these bits of paper are not for things we want to read or offers we need or want, much like the annoying leaflets for such things as pizza delivery services, double glazing or estate agents who insist that your house would sell easily, which I'm sure it wouldn't. All go in the recycling bin and are really a great waste of resources. Even if you buy a magazine in a shop, such as W.H. Smith, most magazines you buy from the newsstand have similar leaflets inside and I notice that Smith's now have a bin in their shops which are there to take these annoying leaflets as they fall out when you open the magazine.

At the petrol station. Why can it be so difficult to fill your car up with petrol? How is it, when you manage to remove the  petrol hose from it's holder on the pump, it can be incredibly difficult to pull the hose out of its housing? Why can't it remain a decent length enabling you to fill your car successfully? Also gripping the trigger-mechanism takes quite a bit of effort as it can be quite stiff and difficult to keep pressed so the petrol flows. This similar thing happens when you go to put air in your tyres, especially at our local Shell station. You need a 20p piece to operate the machine, which s reasonable I suppose price-wise, but attempting to pull the hose out can be tricky as it won't maintain a decent length so you can reach all four tyres. Particularly difficult when you need to get to the side of the car furthest from the air-pump machine. The hose keeps wanting to recoil itself when you let fo of it and you need to put a foot on it to stop it retracting into the machine. This job is difficult if done on your own which is why it's easier with a second person who stays with the machine as you need to be able to read the pressure of each tyre so as to make sure it is correct. Do the owners or manufacturers of this machinery not realise how difficult these operations are and perhaps modify them so as to improve them and make it easier for their users? The answer to that is 'probably not,' because most people never complain about these things.

More little niggles. How about this one? Pink bin bags. Those which are provided by Milton Keynes Council to put your recycled rubbish in. First of all, they come on a roll. A long roll and it can be difficult to find the perforations which you use to separate a single bag from the roll. Tear rather than pull, because if you don't you might rip the bag. The you have to peel the bag open, and because the plastic these bags are made of it's extremely difficult. I find that licking my finger helps so the separate sections allow the bag to open. As I say, these pink bags are very thin and flimsy, which means you have to be extra careful when you place your recyclable rubbish inside because otherwise it will tear and become worthless. Why do they have to be so flimsy and, therefore, easy to tear, allowing rubbish to spill out? Just ask those that provide them at Milton Keynes Council.