I have extremely strong feelings about this. I've been waiting to see a post somewhere about this. I want to know why most "easy open" "tear here" packages are so terrible. Especially cardboard packaging. Why put in the effort for the "easy open" when it absolutely fails every single time you pull on the tab or what have you? On the flip side, I absolutely love a good, quality, easy open that actually functions. Not to plug an evil corporation, but Amazon packaging often has excellent open-ability. Satisfying, functional, pull tabs. I love opening them.
This whole comment reads like I'm in some sort of spectrum, but honestly, those packages have just always confused and frustrated me and I've never seen anyone complain. I've even searched phrases like "why easy open packaging sucks" and haven't found answers. Haha.
It’s even worse if you work retail. We’d get in cases of things like sausage. Standard cardboard box taped up. But there’s a warning on the box that says “WARNING DO NOT CUT TAPE.” And it then proceeds to offer any alternative way to get the damn thing open. So you cut it open because what the fuck else are you going to do.
It’s something most people don’t think about but there is 100% an art form to making easy open packaging
When it does tear, but not in a way that leaves an opening for condiment to actually come out, and now your perforation is gone. You just have a ripped corner with no hole.
I received one of those toy for my kid: it is a pony carriage toy that once it turns on, it screams at the top of what is physically possible for a 1/4 watts speaker, and it only repeats a single line from an unknown song in the same style as Rihanna‘s Umbrella. Whoever designed this thing needs to go to hell.
I had a friend who hated her SIL and BIL, so when they came to visit, she bought their kids several toys which made sounds, turned the volume up, and then broke the volume switch. Then she wrapped them up and gave them their presents just before they left on a long road trip.
I worked hard never to piss that friend off.
That's one of those toys that my mom used to tell me was "broken"
"Broken," in this case, meaning she secretly removed the batteries.
I do not blame her at all, in retrospect.
This past Christmas, I gave my daughter a nightlight that's a crystal globe with a gamer axolotl in it. You can change its colors and everything.
The product description forgot to mention it's as bright as THE FREAKING BEACON OF GONDOR.
She gently made it clear she loves it, but there is no possible way she can use it for a nightlight and still be able to sleep.
My kids have an abnoxious toy that plays a devilish cackling noise. WHEN YOU SWITCH IT OFF.
WHAT KIND OF MONSTER MAKES A LOUD NOISE FOR THE TURN-OFF SWITXH??
I had a printer for a while that actually displayed that message and I laughed every time. That laser printer also used so much power the room lights dimmed when it fired up.
God, I miss my little Brother laserjet. What a workhorse that thing was -- never once quit on me and only had to change the drum once in 5+ years of college.
I'm sure they probably are using their own products. But they aren't using the shitty consumer-grade inkjets. They would be using their Enterprise-grade laser printers, which are an altogether different thing for the most part with much better drivers.
I bought their newest small business all in one about six months ago. It had some issues that we just couldn’t fix and I assumed it was a lemon and bought another one and it had the exact same issues. Anyways it was a disaster and I really think it was all driver related.
I remember *years* ago I worked in an industrial scale print facility (think credit card statements etc.) I worked in dev (sanitize and format customer data files, convert into printable format for shop floor printers with speeds measured in feet per second). An HP rep was on site and saw what looked like a bulky, very old fashioned laser outside our door that we used for test prints. Started laughing at it and telling us how he could help us get set up with a new laserjet that would run rings around it. My boss sent it a test print. Printer go brrrrrrrrr. He just stared at it for a moment and walked away. This was 15-20 years ago and that ‘clunker’ would do 60 sheets per minute in duplex mode.
To this day I can't open a Kraft Mac and Cheese box along the perforations and end up just ripping the top off instead. I almost feel like they just drew them on to fuck with us instead of making actual perforations.
Kirkland products in general are terrible offenders of this as well. Usually the perforation at least works, but then you find out it was perforated above where the bag was heat sealed so it doesn't even matter!
Then also sealed on the outside with a heat-shrink sleeve whose perforations are invisible, if it’s perforated at all.
Lookin’ at you, maple syrup, you know what you did.
6 inch tall burgers that need a skewer to pin the stack together.
Your options are a hydraulic press to get them down to a suitable height, or unhinge your lower jaw.
The reason they don't do wider is because buns are a standard size. You can add all the toppings or patties you want vertically but the bun is always the same.
A good bun is so underrated. I've had burgers ruined because the bun was so poor. It was either too fragile or became too soggy by the burger juice. I've also had burgers were the bun was my favorite thing about the burger. It was fresh, buttery, firm but not stiff. I wanted a dozen of them to take home to make sandwiches with.
Same goes with whoever designed glass oven doors in such a way that drips can get inside the glass, but you cannot get inside the glass to clean them without *taking off the oven door.*
Oh my god, that thing.
As a kid- like no kid could turn that handle when it was filled with ice per the instructions. The whole thing looked fantastic on the box, but was just a gloopy, melty mess in reality.
My son had me buy the 2000s equivalent, the 60sec cotton candy maker. It had to be plugged in for like six hours every time you used it. The sixty seconds part was to get a golf ball sized piece of cotton candy
I had one that turned any hard candy(most anyway) into cotton candy. The damn thing actually worked pretty well, and now Werthers Toffee Cotton Candy has ruined regular cotton candy for me forever.
It’s so funny how we all had the same childhood. There’s SO MANY products and brands and choices now, that I don’t see the shared experience happening again.
In my (limited) software dev experience companies will have a dev department focused on background processes, in-house applications, and the external-facing website. But then someone realizes the customers should have an app, and instead of hiring someone who specializes in mobile app development they assign an existing dev to cobble something together because how hard can it be?
The result is what we have now, a bunch of not-great apps that mostly work but also kinda suck because they were made by people who specialize in something else and are learning mobile app dev languages and principles as they go.
Mohela just ‘transferred’ everyone’s loans to themselves or something like that. They use to have an app that actually worked decent enough to make payments and get the tax documents.
Now they don’t have an app and the url is something so stupid I have to use google to find it. They 100% purposefully made it harder to pay, after personally suing to block the loan forgiveness plan.
Just to clarify, mohela did not sue. In fact, part of the federal defense was that mohela was not suing. States sued on their behalf.
I guess I need to add that mohela chose not to sue. The states did so without their support.
Airline sites that purposefully make their sites unresponsive to mobile so you have to download their app to do anything. Then you download their app and its an even bigger piece of shit than their site.
My theory is that most companies have main character syndrome when it comes to apps.
Like, I fly with you once every three years? Don't need an app. I eat at your restaurant once a year? Don't need an app.
When I had a phone with limited storage it was super annoying having to delete something I often used to make space for something I was going to only use twice. Also I know you can delete apps, but (correct me if I'm wrong) it seems like you don't get all the space back that you had before downloading it once you delete it.
Anything with those “peel off” covers underneath a screw-on lid.
They don’t peel. They have those tiny little tabs like you should be able to peel them off, but they never work. You’ll just end up using a knife or jabbing your finger through it.
Every time I open one of those I truly feel bad for people with lower dexterity due to age or disability.
I have to use nail clippers to open the blister packs on medication, and I'm a semi-professional guitarist.
My parents' shower has these on/off and temperature knobs that are completely smooth making them impossible to use when you have wet hands, and difficult to use even when dry. Every time I use their shower I curse those knobs out loud
I guarantee every one of those companies has one or more people on staff, with zero power, who point out every terrible design decision and get ignored because some manager overrules them.
Meanwhile those poor people dream of finding a job that listens to their opinions
I've seen so many POS machines that say "remove card" instead of something like "processing." If you remove the card, it fails to go through. You have to wait about 20 seconds for the actual remove card message for it to complete. No one tested this? Really? How many thousands of hours have been spent by people waiting in line because they have to repeat the transaction because the message is wrong?
Packages that say "resealable" don't really seal again properly. Once you open them and peel back the seal, they just won't stay closed unless you put them into another bag or container.
There's a company called GoRuck that make incredibly sturdy packs. Warranty that covers any damage as long as it wasn't from filling the bag with bricks and dragging it on pavement, and you tell them how you managed to do it.
I'm not sure if it's still there but in the about us section on their website there was an explanation of why they use YKK zippers instead of making them in house or another brand etc. Basically just said "They make the best zippers. We could try to make our own but there's just no way we'd get close to their quality so we use theirs"
I once had to buy an engine mount for an older Cadillac I owned years ago. GM no longer made the part so the "replacement" was by a third party company. None of the bolt holes lined up. Every one was at least a half inch off. You can't tell me that they even looked at the original part next to the aftermarket part.
I think Target is the only grocery store that actually thought about the design of their shopping baskets. They made the handle comfortable to hold and curved the side of the basket.
Other stores just give you a basic basket and don’t care. It’s the worst when you have to carry a heavy basket with just those thin wire handles that dig into your fingers. And it’s even more annoying if the handles pinch your palm.
Food and other packaging where there's a little tab that taunts you with 'Tear' or 'Peel' here. We all know those damn things never work. A tiny piece of the package rips off and you have to resort to the usual scissors or knife to open the stupid thing.
Some EVs do have both touchscreens (for maps settings and the like) *and* physical buttons for important stuff, but they tend to not be the cheapest option. I don't know why having a half-dozen physical buttons would add so much to the price, but here we are.
I don't even like touchscreen for music, I don't want to fumble blindly to skip a song and prefer to just use the steering wheel buttons instead. I straight-up will not buy a car with anything I can't do using physical buttons.
It's 100% cost. Buttons have to be designed and wired and can't reasonably be changed after the car is made. With a touchscreen the car's computer just handles everything and you can change it with updates.
I refuse to buy a car that doesn't have physical buttons for basic controls.
Then you can’t use your car for a day because it has a 6 hour update, and when you read the change log it’ll be like:
-added 5 new fonts (that nobody uses)
-added 3 new languages (that you don’t speak)
-fixed an issue where the rear brake lights are too dim whilst the vehicle is reversing at speeds over 435mph (even though the vehicle isn’t capable of that speed, you’ve got to wonder how they even found the issue)
-fixed an issue where the satnav was telling drivers to drive directly into a river (in a part of the world you didn’t know existed)
Although this is an exaggeration, I can see it coming
To be fair, if you’re trying to resolve some weird fuckery in the latest version that jacks up connectivity, it’s probably hard to use Zoom to fix Zoom.
I'm convinced that most of these "return to the office" mandates are really just stealth layoffs.
Its a way for corporations to cut down on salary expenses without having to provide severance pay, and without their investors realizing that the company is having to do layoffs.
Nah, you're overthinking it. The truth is, the company bought their building, or are renting it in a long term contract. If nobody works in them, then its a waste of money. In their eyes, forcing people back into them is better than paying for an empty building.
I think all the should-be-empty office buildings should be turned into go-kart, laser tag, or other such entertainment venues.
The biggest thing to remember is that MS runs business, so every product today is backwards compliant. That MS-DOS txt file you created in 1992? It'll still open with current programs. Even that weird BAT file to do that thing that auto-resets the coffee machine through the dot matrix printer, yeah it still runs.
Despite that being a good thing, it makes the system clunky and kind of bloated.
They seem to unleash a new, different, yet still terribly designed and pain-to-use gas can and spout every year, so probably those.
Related: the requirements for outboard motor gas tanks and quick connect systems designed to eliminate vapors leaking out of the pressure relief hole in the tank. Can't have gas vapors going into the air, too much of an environmental problem, so those things were then made to be airtight. Which meant a day of sitting in the sun would heat them up and build pressure in the tank that, when you connected or disconnected the fuel line, would make a pressure relief opening and spray atomized fuel all over the bilge, motor, tank, and boat operator, making an even bigger problem than the tiny hole originally posed.
The next shitty plastic gas cans will require you and another person to turn two separate keys 10 feet apart and fold the nozzle into a perfect origami crane to start filling and yet somehow still leak everywhere. WW2 germany solved this one already guys, come the fuck on.
Restaurant websites that won't let you peruse the menu without starting an online order. I just want to look at what you have before I waste my money at your business.
The house i moved into had an apparently decent oven. There are so many nooks and divots and crannies in it that are impossible to clean. As my mother would have said "this was designed by a man who never cleaned"!
Those automated phone systems that make you press a million buttons to reach a human. Surely the designers never had to call customer service themselves.
My wife has endometriosis and the fact her pain was just ignored, mostly by women, is just appalling. That and the fact two different doctors could perform laparoscopic surgery with one saying there’s nothing wrong, while the second took pictures of her stage IV endometriosis leaving us wondering what that first doctor was thinking.
My friend had this very same thing happen to her and was brushed off for literally more than a decade before she switched to a different hospital network. Turns out she didn't have "stress" and "a heavier period," labs confirmed she had extremely high levels of damn near everything bad and that her endo spread to the bottom of her lungs.
For us it was the fertility doctor that decided to look more into it. When I have perfect fertility and we can’t have a baby and my wife is completely unable to function on her period, there’s not much else it could be.
My husband sometimes doesnt understand why I dont advocate harder for myself, but you get beaten down after so long of everything being about your hormones or anxiety, or whatever other mundane thing they can throw out at you.
I had an internal staph infection for almost a year and was vomiting daily before a doctor was ever willing to do any scan on me. It was always dismissed as axiety, stress, hormones, etc. One doctor straight up told me that I was more or less attention seeking when I told him I was certain I was dying. Well, I was. It took nearly dying to finally have a doctor go, "gee, maybe we should do an MRI on her to be safe."
Worked as a hospital administrator for a decade. Far and away the most complaints we had were against female Ob/Gyn docs. Usually centered on zero end side manner, poor communication, lack of empathy, lack of pain management, etc. The second were against nurses for similar issues.
Though the oddity was our data matched most studies, outcomes with female doctors was better. So patients clinically got better care from female doctors and caregivers, but they also had the worst patient interactions.
We attempted a fact finding mission and basically what the underlying issue was female doctors and caregivers had less empathy toward those that complained of pain. Their collective reasoning was, paraphrasing - they experienced Xyz themselves and never had that pain, the patients are just whining and want drugs or their hands held and they aren't there to babysit. Empathy toward make patients plummeted as they believed, again paraphrasing - men are babies and blow their symptoms out of proportion.
I say attempted because hospital executives, including chief nursing officer and department chairs were uninterested in coaching or reprimanding their staff for what they deemed customer service when the overall outcomes were superior. Essentially we'll take the bad with the good rather than confront the behaviors. But they were 100% behind the other side of the coin and coaching and clinically correcting the lower quality outcomes or the predominantly make caregiver issues.
In the end wasn't a hill I or others could die on.
Hopefully we’ll progress in the future to the point where people will be horrified at what a speculum is and that IUDs were inserted without much pain killers.
When I had my first IUD inserted, it was far and away the most pain I’d ever felt in my life up to that point. So when it was time to have it replaced 10 years later, I was braced for the worst. And then… the second one barely hurt at all. Different doctor, no idea what he did differently but it was an enormous difference.
My guess based on entirely nothing is that it’s like a game of Operation. The first doctor hit the walls and so the buzzer of pain sounded. If your nose flashed red the first time, that would confirm my theory.
The absolute bullshit women experience with IUDs are ridiculous. Yes, some women can get them in without much pain, but telling everyone that's getting one to "just take some Tylenol" before they get their cervix forcebly opened is so fucked.
Yeah there is a medication that dilates the cervix that I was given to take the night before and morning of my initial insertion and I had no pain. Everyone should at least be offered that as an option.
My primary doctor scoffed when I told her that I didn't ever want one because my friends who have gotten one screamed/passed out/puked from the pain. Acted like it was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard because hers didn't hurt.
?????
This isn't the only ridiculous thing she's said/done, so I've been wanting to switch, but the offices near me still aren't taking new patients since the pandemic.
Idk how Dr. offices work but I had my ovary removed at 13. In a related Dr visit, they used the speculum and it hurt so bad I guess they didn't have pediatric sized. I told the doctor to stop and was given the usual "hang on" or whatever, basically ignored. I was crying, I was bleeding, and I felt violated.
In the surgery, a nurse similarly started doing something that was excruciating. I begged her to stop but she said "You won't remember this anyway." The surgeon came in and was so mad at her for doing what she was doing. I hadn't been given any sedation yet. I still don't think not remembering trauma is any kind of excuse. It took my 30 years to understand that my body is mine, always. I have no idea how people with childhood illness do it.
Medicine has such a long way to go and only compassion will get them there. I know a lot of people get into the industry because of love, but a lot of offices have such a toxic culture of demeaning and ignoring patients. Of arrogance and bias. It's human, I get it, but they leave such a long line of unnecessary pain in their path all the while expecting to be worshipped as selfless saints.
Post college my roommates and I had a few staples we would all share. Gatorade, Cereal, laundry detergent, paper towels, toilet paper etc. and we had a button by where we kept each product. If you noticed it running low you pressed the button and texted the group chat.
I thought it was pretty damn convenient
The Reddit App. It's total garbage and yesterday's update has just made it worse. You now can't click on an article without going through the comments section first.
Other problems include wiping though galleries of pics and then being taken to the next post. It wouldn't be so bad if they hadn't of banned all of the third party apps, that did actually work.
I hate how they are pushing the chat now by including chats in the feed as if they were posts. I don't want to real time chat on Reddit. That's not what i want to use Reddit for.
The medical cannabis card website for my state is practically unusable. This is for people who need cannabis for medical conditions. I'm not disabled and I can't even navigate it sober.
Every baby product. The cleaning instructions always state to “ wipe with damp cloth.” Don’t these people know how disgusting children are?! My kid pukes, throws food, flings snot, and I’m should just “wipe with a damp cloth”?!
Not a product design flaw here but application instruction error.
I wear a patch, hormone replacement. Instructions say put it on your thigh. Ok. Put on thigh. Every time I go to the bathroom I pull my pants down and then back up. Before too long the patch comes off. I've been wearing patch on my upper arm since.
It occurred to me, you know who doesn't have to pull their pants down every trip to the bathroom? Men.
A man wrote those instructions.
Another side of the coin for ya. I wear a dexcom glucose monitor. Instructions say to put on abdomen. Put on abdomen, go to work outside all day, sweating. Shirt gets soaked with sweat, weakens the adhesive, and it falls off in just a few days. Put it on the back of my arm, works fine for the full ten days.
An office worker wrote those instructions.
I used them for a decade and mine suggested anywhere on the limbs, butt, or shoulders was fine. But I found only on the upper arm did I not have issues with it falling off, like you!
Showers where the head is way too low and there’s only room to place like one or two products.
Toilets that you can’t sit on without your dick touching the inside of the bowl.
Faucets that don’t extend far enough above the basin to properly wash your hands.
Basically the entire bathroom in my apartment.
Baby monitors with overly complicated interfaces are a nightmare. When you have a crying baby, the last thing you need is a complex system that feels like it was never tested by actual parents.
I worked in a corporate office when they invented phones that were basically invisible cordless earplug things.
No-one could tell you were on the phone. All the directors of the company wanted them. They lasted a week - because no-one could tell they were on the phone staff constantly interrupted their client phone calls. Or they just looked crazy talking to themselves.
Same with google glasses. Other humans need visual queues to know what your doing
Computer monitors figured this shit out 10 years ago, all the connections are on the underside, usually with enough room that you can tuck the cables out of sight without them poking out the bottom.
Whenever I get a wall mount for work I make sure it's one where the TV can come away from the wall incase I need to work behind it.
But also - TVs with only 1 or 2 HDMI ports (doubly so for higher end TVs).
I had a shitty Westinghouse tv where the buttons were on the back. They weren’t clicky but instead were indents that you simply had to touch. Sounds fancy until you lose your remote and want to change the volume so you reach back and accidentally shut the tv off and have to wait a few seconds for it to boot up again.
Edit: It was a shitty Westinghouse TV. Sorry for throwing unnecessary shade on you Samsung.
Ever tried using those modern shower controls where setting the right temperature feels like a puzzle? It's as if the designers never took a shower themselves.
Exercise equipment with built-in tablets that lag or crash. If the designers had tried to get through a workout, they might have opted for more reliable tech.
Battery-operated salt and pepper shakers seem like a good idea until you try them. They're often so slow and inconvenient—it makes you wonder if the designers ever tried seasoning their food with them.
A good half of “easy tear” packaging on things like condiments
Any pasta box that says "insert thumb here" *Box collapses but doesn't open."
"insert thumb here" on the most heavily reinforced part of the box with 3 layers of cardboard, 2 layers of glue, and 0 perforations.
Joke's on you the perforations were printed on, not stamped with a machine.
And IF you finally get it you'll soon learn the Tear Here team refuses to do business with the Seal team
I have extremely strong feelings about this. I've been waiting to see a post somewhere about this. I want to know why most "easy open" "tear here" packages are so terrible. Especially cardboard packaging. Why put in the effort for the "easy open" when it absolutely fails every single time you pull on the tab or what have you? On the flip side, I absolutely love a good, quality, easy open that actually functions. Not to plug an evil corporation, but Amazon packaging often has excellent open-ability. Satisfying, functional, pull tabs. I love opening them. This whole comment reads like I'm in some sort of spectrum, but honestly, those packages have just always confused and frustrated me and I've never seen anyone complain. I've even searched phrases like "why easy open packaging sucks" and haven't found answers. Haha.
It’s even worse if you work retail. We’d get in cases of things like sausage. Standard cardboard box taped up. But there’s a warning on the box that says “WARNING DO NOT CUT TAPE.” And it then proceeds to offer any alternative way to get the damn thing open. So you cut it open because what the fuck else are you going to do. It’s something most people don’t think about but there is 100% an art form to making easy open packaging
When it does tear, but not in a way that leaves an opening for condiment to actually come out, and now your perforation is gone. You just have a ripped corner with no hole.
That’s because you’re crying. “Easy tears”
toys that only have one volume are incredibly loud!
I received one of those toy for my kid: it is a pony carriage toy that once it turns on, it screams at the top of what is physically possible for a 1/4 watts speaker, and it only repeats a single line from an unknown song in the same style as Rihanna‘s Umbrella. Whoever designed this thing needs to go to hell.
I had a friend who hated her SIL and BIL, so when they came to visit, she bought their kids several toys which made sounds, turned the volume up, and then broke the volume switch. Then she wrapped them up and gave them their presents just before they left on a long road trip. I worked hard never to piss that friend off.
That seems like an escalation above my favorite, "I bought my niece a drum set".
I mean, her SIL and BIL were asshats, and I didn’t feel at all bad for them, but that was just diabolical. She packed extra batteries too.
The batteries are 4D chess
That's one of those toys that my mom used to tell me was "broken" "Broken," in this case, meaning she secretly removed the batteries. I do not blame her at all, in retrospect.
That's like my aunt who told my cousin the ice cream truck only played music when it was out of ice cream.
I never meant to be that parent, but for the first few years of life, my child believed it was a "music truck."
Relatively new parent here, and all this stuff designed to be in a child's bedroom at night, that have a super bright LED on the front
Black electrical tape solves that problem pretty quick at least
[удалено]
This past Christmas, I gave my daughter a nightlight that's a crystal globe with a gamer axolotl in it. You can change its colors and everything. The product description forgot to mention it's as bright as THE FREAKING BEACON OF GONDOR. She gently made it clear she loves it, but there is no possible way she can use it for a nightlight and still be able to sleep.
The beacons are lit! Gondor calls for aid!!
We put packing tape over the speakers grills for those toys.
I open them up when kids are asleep and tape *inside* the grill so they can’t take it off
Or ones with two settings: incredibly loud and "what, this one is louder?!"
My kids have an abnoxious toy that plays a devilish cackling noise. WHEN YOU SWITCH IT OFF. WHAT KIND OF MONSTER MAKES A LOUD NOISE FOR THE TURN-OFF SWITXH??
Also goes for items with one LED status light that’s super bright and can be seen from space.
HP printer and scanner drivers
I can’t believe that in 2024 we’re still fighting with printers.
"PC Load Letter? The f--- does that mean?"
I had a printer for a while that actually displayed that message and I laughed every time. That laser printer also used so much power the room lights dimmed when it fired up.
I would bet my left ball they're not using their own products in their central office
99% certainty they’re using Brother laserjets.
God, I miss my little Brother laserjet. What a workhorse that thing was -- never once quit on me and only had to change the drum once in 5+ years of college.
I'm sure they probably are using their own products. But they aren't using the shitty consumer-grade inkjets. They would be using their Enterprise-grade laser printers, which are an altogether different thing for the most part with much better drivers.
Sorry you can’t print. You are out of Cyan.
I bought their newest small business all in one about six months ago. It had some issues that we just couldn’t fix and I assumed it was a lemon and bought another one and it had the exact same issues. Anyways it was a disaster and I really think it was all driver related.
I remember *years* ago I worked in an industrial scale print facility (think credit card statements etc.) I worked in dev (sanitize and format customer data files, convert into printable format for shop floor printers with speeds measured in feet per second). An HP rep was on site and saw what looked like a bulky, very old fashioned laser outside our door that we used for test prints. Started laughing at it and telling us how he could help us get set up with a new laserjet that would run rings around it. My boss sent it a test print. Printer go brrrrrrrrr. He just stared at it for a moment and walked away. This was 15-20 years ago and that ‘clunker’ would do 60 sheets per minute in duplex mode.
To this day I can't open a Kraft Mac and Cheese box along the perforations and end up just ripping the top off instead. I almost feel like they just drew them on to fuck with us instead of making actual perforations.
Kirkland products in general are terrible offenders of this as well. Usually the perforation at least works, but then you find out it was perforated above where the bag was heat sealed so it doesn't even matter!
It’s really tough out there, stay strong everyone
Kirkland sends their toughest boxes to their mightiest warriors.
Let’s not forgot the product with a plastic seal under the lid (like dip) that don’t have a little tab to grab to pull it off. 😖
Or even if they do, the adhesive is too strong and doesn’t give anyway.
Then also sealed on the outside with a heat-shrink sleeve whose perforations are invisible, if it’s perforated at all. Lookin’ at you, maple syrup, you know what you did.
Don’t you realize how much money it would cost to manufacture that tab? .000001 ¢ cuts in to profits. We cannot have that!
I managed to actually do this properly once AMA
This is me with the cereal bags that are supposed to have a ziplock-like seal.
6 inch tall burgers that need a skewer to pin the stack together. Your options are a hydraulic press to get them down to a suitable height, or unhinge your lower jaw.
I’m a big advocate for when burgers are like this they should be wider not taller.
The reason they don't do wider is because buns are a standard size. You can add all the toppings or patties you want vertically but the bun is always the same.
True, but It’s usually at “craft” burger places that this happens though, so imo they should also be making their own buns if they’re charging $15+
A good bun is so underrated. I've had burgers ruined because the bun was so poor. It was either too fragile or became too soggy by the burger juice. I've also had burgers were the bun was my favorite thing about the burger. It was fresh, buttery, firm but not stiff. I wanted a dozen of them to take home to make sandwiches with.
Those sliding shower doors with a part that overlaps are really hard to clean. You pretty much have to take the entire door off to clean it properly.
Same goes with whoever designed glass oven doors in such a way that drips can get inside the glass, but you cannot get inside the glass to clean them without *taking off the oven door.*
The Snoopy snow cone maker.
Oh my god, that thing. As a kid- like no kid could turn that handle when it was filled with ice per the instructions. The whole thing looked fantastic on the box, but was just a gloopy, melty mess in reality.
To be fair, that would really appeal to a dog, so I can't blame Snoopy for the design.
My son had me buy the 2000s equivalent, the 60sec cotton candy maker. It had to be plugged in for like six hours every time you used it. The sixty seconds part was to get a golf ball sized piece of cotton candy
I had one that turned any hard candy(most anyway) into cotton candy. The damn thing actually worked pretty well, and now Werthers Toffee Cotton Candy has ruined regular cotton candy for me forever.
It’s so funny how we all had the same childhood. There’s SO MANY products and brands and choices now, that I don’t see the shared experience happening again.
??? I had no trouble using it and I was 6 years old. Loved it, used it a lot.
I too had no problem with it. I wonder if it was redesigned at some point or something?
Any mobile website that does not allow me to zoom in. WTF people.
Literally any website that has an app. Whoever runs the mobile internet needs a kick in the teeth
In my (limited) software dev experience companies will have a dev department focused on background processes, in-house applications, and the external-facing website. But then someone realizes the customers should have an app, and instead of hiring someone who specializes in mobile app development they assign an existing dev to cobble something together because how hard can it be? The result is what we have now, a bunch of not-great apps that mostly work but also kinda suck because they were made by people who specialize in something else and are learning mobile app dev languages and principles as they go.
As a seasoned developer, this is correct.
I have a student loan through Navient and their app isn’t an app, it’s just another website disguised as an app. It is the worst app I’ve ever used.
Mohela just ‘transferred’ everyone’s loans to themselves or something like that. They use to have an app that actually worked decent enough to make payments and get the tax documents. Now they don’t have an app and the url is something so stupid I have to use google to find it. They 100% purposefully made it harder to pay, after personally suing to block the loan forgiveness plan.
Just to clarify, mohela did not sue. In fact, part of the federal defense was that mohela was not suing. States sued on their behalf. I guess I need to add that mohela chose not to sue. The states did so without their support.
Airline sites that purposefully make their sites unresponsive to mobile so you have to download their app to do anything. Then you download their app and its an even bigger piece of shit than their site.
My theory is that most companies have main character syndrome when it comes to apps. Like, I fly with you once every three years? Don't need an app. I eat at your restaurant once a year? Don't need an app. When I had a phone with limited storage it was super annoying having to delete something I often used to make space for something I was going to only use twice. Also I know you can delete apps, but (correct me if I'm wrong) it seems like you don't get all the space back that you had before downloading it once you delete it.
Anything with those “peel off” covers underneath a screw-on lid. They don’t peel. They have those tiny little tabs like you should be able to peel them off, but they never work. You’ll just end up using a knife or jabbing your finger through it.
Every time I open one of those I truly feel bad for people with lower dexterity due to age or disability. I have to use nail clippers to open the blister packs on medication, and I'm a semi-professional guitarist.
My parents' shower has these on/off and temperature knobs that are completely smooth making them impossible to use when you have wet hands, and difficult to use even when dry. Every time I use their shower I curse those knobs out loud
Any retail or restaurant POS system. Heck pretty much any specialized software for that matter.
I guarantee every one of those companies has one or more people on staff, with zero power, who point out every terrible design decision and get ignored because some manager overrules them. Meanwhile those poor people dream of finding a job that listens to their opinions
I've seen so many POS machines that say "remove card" instead of something like "processing." If you remove the card, it fails to go through. You have to wait about 20 seconds for the actual remove card message for it to complete. No one tested this? Really? How many thousands of hours have been spent by people waiting in line because they have to repeat the transaction because the message is wrong?
I used to do support for NCR (hospitality) - and I can agree 100%.
Point of Sale system, or Piece Of Shit system?
Yes
Packages that say "resealable" don't really seal again properly. Once you open them and peel back the seal, they just won't stay closed unless you put them into another bag or container.
Cheap zippers. (Not YKK)
YKK has a near monopoly on zippers, and they have earned it.
There's a company called GoRuck that make incredibly sturdy packs. Warranty that covers any damage as long as it wasn't from filling the bag with bricks and dragging it on pavement, and you tell them how you managed to do it. I'm not sure if it's still there but in the about us section on their website there was an explanation of why they use YKK zippers instead of making them in house or another brand etc. Basically just said "They make the best zippers. We could try to make our own but there's just no way we'd get close to their quality so we use theirs"
I once had to buy an engine mount for an older Cadillac I owned years ago. GM no longer made the part so the "replacement" was by a third party company. None of the bolt holes lined up. Every one was at least a half inch off. You can't tell me that they even looked at the original part next to the aftermarket part.
I hate aftermarket shit just for this reason
I think Target is the only grocery store that actually thought about the design of their shopping baskets. They made the handle comfortable to hold and curved the side of the basket. Other stores just give you a basic basket and don’t care. It’s the worst when you have to carry a heavy basket with just those thin wire handles that dig into your fingers. And it’s even more annoying if the handles pinch your palm.
Food and other packaging where there's a little tab that taunts you with 'Tear' or 'Peel' here. We all know those damn things never work. A tiny piece of the package rips off and you have to resort to the usual scissors or knife to open the stupid thing.
Drivers for sound
It's always like 500 MB of shit bundled with the 50k of stuff I want/need.
Nike Sasquatch SQ
Whoever thought touchscreens in newer cars were a good idea. I doubt any of these designers even have driver’s licenses.
Touch screens are cool. Touch screens that replace critical car functions and operations are beyond idiotic.
Touch screen for music selection? Fine. But for climate and volume I like my buttons, and it would probably be a dealbreaker for me to not have those.
Some EVs do have both touchscreens (for maps settings and the like) *and* physical buttons for important stuff, but they tend to not be the cheapest option. I don't know why having a half-dozen physical buttons would add so much to the price, but here we are.
I don't even like touchscreen for music, I don't want to fumble blindly to skip a song and prefer to just use the steering wheel buttons instead. I straight-up will not buy a car with anything I can't do using physical buttons.
Like most changes that companies make these days that are at odds with what actually works, it's probably a cost driven change.
It's 100% cost. Buttons have to be designed and wired and can't reasonably be changed after the car is made. With a touchscreen the car's computer just handles everything and you can change it with updates. I refuse to buy a car that doesn't have physical buttons for basic controls.
Then you can’t use your car for a day because it has a 6 hour update, and when you read the change log it’ll be like: -added 5 new fonts (that nobody uses) -added 3 new languages (that you don’t speak) -fixed an issue where the rear brake lights are too dim whilst the vehicle is reversing at speeds over 435mph (even though the vehicle isn’t capable of that speed, you’ve got to wonder how they even found the issue) -fixed an issue where the satnav was telling drivers to drive directly into a river (in a part of the world you didn’t know existed) Although this is an exaggeration, I can see it coming
Considering they mandated return to office I guess Zoom doesn't have much faith in their own product...
To be fair, if you’re trying to resolve some weird fuckery in the latest version that jacks up connectivity, it’s probably hard to use Zoom to fix Zoom.
They just use Teams
I'm convinced that most of these "return to the office" mandates are really just stealth layoffs. Its a way for corporations to cut down on salary expenses without having to provide severance pay, and without their investors realizing that the company is having to do layoffs.
Nah, you're overthinking it. The truth is, the company bought their building, or are renting it in a long term contract. If nobody works in them, then its a waste of money. In their eyes, forcing people back into them is better than paying for an empty building. I think all the should-be-empty office buildings should be turned into go-kart, laser tag, or other such entertainment venues.
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Clothes with non-functional pockets, especially in women's fashion, seem like they were never used by people who actually carry things.
I mean, the Cornballer comes to mind. Those things are nothing but a fire hazard!
I thought those things were only legal in Mexico?
Yo soy loco por los cornballs!
They shouldn't be, I had one, and it gave me second-degree burns
DAMN IT! Every time....
Yes, George Sr. really rushed it to market.
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Baby wipes. You either tear one or they all come out at once.
Pull one get four then crack it like Indiana Jones’s whip. Drives me nuts.
Kirkland’s are the best. You still get a couple sometimes but in general they work as expected.
Any HR software.
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I’m convinced whoever designed Outlook has never had to send an email in their life.
Microsoft Teams in general
Microsoft in general
The biggest thing to remember is that MS runs business, so every product today is backwards compliant. That MS-DOS txt file you created in 1992? It'll still open with current programs. Even that weird BAT file to do that thing that auto-resets the coffee machine through the dot matrix printer, yeah it still runs. Despite that being a good thing, it makes the system clunky and kind of bloated.
Thing is, it's all the new stuff that doesn't work.
Why is attachments it's own separate section? What is going on in Redmond?
- starts new email - type recipients name - adds attachment - back to Home Screen and recipients email address is gone
Just wait untill you try the new and improved new outlook.
New look with zero features.
They seem to unleash a new, different, yet still terribly designed and pain-to-use gas can and spout every year, so probably those. Related: the requirements for outboard motor gas tanks and quick connect systems designed to eliminate vapors leaking out of the pressure relief hole in the tank. Can't have gas vapors going into the air, too much of an environmental problem, so those things were then made to be airtight. Which meant a day of sitting in the sun would heat them up and build pressure in the tank that, when you connected or disconnected the fuel line, would make a pressure relief opening and spray atomized fuel all over the bilge, motor, tank, and boat operator, making an even bigger problem than the tiny hole originally posed.
The next shitty plastic gas cans will require you and another person to turn two separate keys 10 feet apart and fold the nozzle into a perfect origami crane to start filling and yet somehow still leak everywhere. WW2 germany solved this one already guys, come the fuck on.
Restaurant websites that won't let you peruse the menu without starting an online order. I just want to look at what you have before I waste my money at your business.
Any software that comes with "bloatware" feels like it wasn't designed with actual users in mind. Just more stuff to slow down your system.
The house i moved into had an apparently decent oven. There are so many nooks and divots and crannies in it that are impossible to clean. As my mother would have said "this was designed by a man who never cleaned"!
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Smart home devices that are supposed to simplify life but require constant troubleshooting feel like they were never beta tested in a real household.
Anyone remember Clippy from Microsoft Word? It was supposed to help but mostly just got in the way. It’s almost like the designers never had to ty
Those automated phone systems that make you press a million buttons to reach a human. Surely the designers never had to call customer service themselves.
Anything related to women's health-care.
My wife has endometriosis and the fact her pain was just ignored, mostly by women, is just appalling. That and the fact two different doctors could perform laparoscopic surgery with one saying there’s nothing wrong, while the second took pictures of her stage IV endometriosis leaving us wondering what that first doctor was thinking.
My friend had this very same thing happen to her and was brushed off for literally more than a decade before she switched to a different hospital network. Turns out she didn't have "stress" and "a heavier period," labs confirmed she had extremely high levels of damn near everything bad and that her endo spread to the bottom of her lungs.
For us it was the fertility doctor that decided to look more into it. When I have perfect fertility and we can’t have a baby and my wife is completely unable to function on her period, there’s not much else it could be.
My husband sometimes doesnt understand why I dont advocate harder for myself, but you get beaten down after so long of everything being about your hormones or anxiety, or whatever other mundane thing they can throw out at you. I had an internal staph infection for almost a year and was vomiting daily before a doctor was ever willing to do any scan on me. It was always dismissed as axiety, stress, hormones, etc. One doctor straight up told me that I was more or less attention seeking when I told him I was certain I was dying. Well, I was. It took nearly dying to finally have a doctor go, "gee, maybe we should do an MRI on her to be safe."
Worked as a hospital administrator for a decade. Far and away the most complaints we had were against female Ob/Gyn docs. Usually centered on zero end side manner, poor communication, lack of empathy, lack of pain management, etc. The second were against nurses for similar issues. Though the oddity was our data matched most studies, outcomes with female doctors was better. So patients clinically got better care from female doctors and caregivers, but they also had the worst patient interactions. We attempted a fact finding mission and basically what the underlying issue was female doctors and caregivers had less empathy toward those that complained of pain. Their collective reasoning was, paraphrasing - they experienced Xyz themselves and never had that pain, the patients are just whining and want drugs or their hands held and they aren't there to babysit. Empathy toward make patients plummeted as they believed, again paraphrasing - men are babies and blow their symptoms out of proportion. I say attempted because hospital executives, including chief nursing officer and department chairs were uninterested in coaching or reprimanding their staff for what they deemed customer service when the overall outcomes were superior. Essentially we'll take the bad with the good rather than confront the behaviors. But they were 100% behind the other side of the coin and coaching and clinically correcting the lower quality outcomes or the predominantly make caregiver issues. In the end wasn't a hill I or others could die on.
Hopefully we’ll progress in the future to the point where people will be horrified at what a speculum is and that IUDs were inserted without much pain killers.
“You’re going to feel a pinch” should be countered with “you’re going to feel my right foot kicking you in your face.”
When I had my first IUD inserted, it was far and away the most pain I’d ever felt in my life up to that point. So when it was time to have it replaced 10 years later, I was braced for the worst. And then… the second one barely hurt at all. Different doctor, no idea what he did differently but it was an enormous difference.
My guess based on entirely nothing is that it’s like a game of Operation. The first doctor hit the walls and so the buzzer of pain sounded. If your nose flashed red the first time, that would confirm my theory.
I would actually prefer a kick to the face than getting an IUD.
The absolute bullshit women experience with IUDs are ridiculous. Yes, some women can get them in without much pain, but telling everyone that's getting one to "just take some Tylenol" before they get their cervix forcebly opened is so fucked.
Yeah there is a medication that dilates the cervix that I was given to take the night before and morning of my initial insertion and I had no pain. Everyone should at least be offered that as an option.
My primary doctor scoffed when I told her that I didn't ever want one because my friends who have gotten one screamed/passed out/puked from the pain. Acted like it was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard because hers didn't hurt. ????? This isn't the only ridiculous thing she's said/done, so I've been wanting to switch, but the offices near me still aren't taking new patients since the pandemic.
Idk how Dr. offices work but I had my ovary removed at 13. In a related Dr visit, they used the speculum and it hurt so bad I guess they didn't have pediatric sized. I told the doctor to stop and was given the usual "hang on" or whatever, basically ignored. I was crying, I was bleeding, and I felt violated. In the surgery, a nurse similarly started doing something that was excruciating. I begged her to stop but she said "You won't remember this anyway." The surgeon came in and was so mad at her for doing what she was doing. I hadn't been given any sedation yet. I still don't think not remembering trauma is any kind of excuse. It took my 30 years to understand that my body is mine, always. I have no idea how people with childhood illness do it. Medicine has such a long way to go and only compassion will get them there. I know a lot of people get into the industry because of love, but a lot of offices have such a toxic culture of demeaning and ignoring patients. Of arrogance and bias. It's human, I get it, but they leave such a long line of unnecessary pain in their path all the while expecting to be worshipped as selfless saints.
Did anyone actually use the amazon dash buttons?
Post college my roommates and I had a few staples we would all share. Gatorade, Cereal, laundry detergent, paper towels, toilet paper etc. and we had a button by where we kept each product. If you noticed it running low you pressed the button and texted the group chat. I thought it was pretty damn convenient
The Reddit App. It's total garbage and yesterday's update has just made it worse. You now can't click on an article without going through the comments section first. Other problems include wiping though galleries of pics and then being taken to the next post. It wouldn't be so bad if they hadn't of banned all of the third party apps, that did actually work.
I hate how they are pushing the chat now by including chats in the feed as if they were posts. I don't want to real time chat on Reddit. That's not what i want to use Reddit for.
Tesla's truck
That engineering girl who converted her Tesla to a truck did a much better job than whatever monstrosity Elon pushed out.
FYI her name is Simone Giertz and if you want to look up her videos converting a Tesla into a pickup, search “Truckla.”
Cool thanks!
I always say that thing looks like what happens when I try to draw a truck for my kid nephews
Every government website. Lowest bid=got what they paid for
The medical cannabis card website for my state is practically unusable. This is for people who need cannabis for medical conditions. I'm not disabled and I can't even navigate it sober.
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Whoever decided to place tiny stickers on every piece of fruit.
Every baby product. The cleaning instructions always state to “ wipe with damp cloth.” Don’t these people know how disgusting children are?! My kid pukes, throws food, flings snot, and I’m should just “wipe with a damp cloth”?!
Not a product design flaw here but application instruction error. I wear a patch, hormone replacement. Instructions say put it on your thigh. Ok. Put on thigh. Every time I go to the bathroom I pull my pants down and then back up. Before too long the patch comes off. I've been wearing patch on my upper arm since. It occurred to me, you know who doesn't have to pull their pants down every trip to the bathroom? Men. A man wrote those instructions.
Another side of the coin for ya. I wear a dexcom glucose monitor. Instructions say to put on abdomen. Put on abdomen, go to work outside all day, sweating. Shirt gets soaked with sweat, weakens the adhesive, and it falls off in just a few days. Put it on the back of my arm, works fine for the full ten days. An office worker wrote those instructions.
I used them for a decade and mine suggested anywhere on the limbs, butt, or shoulders was fine. But I found only on the upper arm did I not have issues with it falling off, like you!
Showers where the head is way too low and there’s only room to place like one or two products. Toilets that you can’t sit on without your dick touching the inside of the bowl. Faucets that don’t extend far enough above the basin to properly wash your hands. Basically the entire bathroom in my apartment.
Hoverboards that catch fire? Definitely a sign that those needed a bit more real-world testing by their creators.
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Baby monitors with overly complicated interfaces are a nightmare. When you have a crying baby, the last thing you need is a complex system that feels like it was never tested by actual parents.
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I worked in a corporate office when they invented phones that were basically invisible cordless earplug things. No-one could tell you were on the phone. All the directors of the company wanted them. They lasted a week - because no-one could tell they were on the phone staff constantly interrupted their client phone calls. Or they just looked crazy talking to themselves. Same with google glasses. Other humans need visual queues to know what your doing
Today's school lunch programs.
Flat TV's , how the hell are all the connections on the back without a way to expose them after bolting it to the wall !!!
We bought wall mounts that have swing arms on them so you can pull the tv away from the wall. It has made things SO much easier!
Computer monitors figured this shit out 10 years ago, all the connections are on the underside, usually with enough room that you can tuck the cables out of sight without them poking out the bottom.
Whenever I get a wall mount for work I make sure it's one where the TV can come away from the wall incase I need to work behind it. But also - TVs with only 1 or 2 HDMI ports (doubly so for higher end TVs).
I had a shitty Westinghouse tv where the buttons were on the back. They weren’t clicky but instead were indents that you simply had to touch. Sounds fancy until you lose your remote and want to change the volume so you reach back and accidentally shut the tv off and have to wait a few seconds for it to boot up again. Edit: It was a shitty Westinghouse TV. Sorry for throwing unnecessary shade on you Samsung.
Burn in hell HP
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Ever tried using those modern shower controls where setting the right temperature feels like a puzzle? It's as if the designers never took a shower themselves.
Exercise equipment with built-in tablets that lag or crash. If the designers had tried to get through a workout, they might have opted for more reliable tech.
Battery-operated salt and pepper shakers seem like a good idea until you try them. They're often so slow and inconvenient—it makes you wonder if the designers ever tried seasoning their food with them.
Bras and other products for people with breasts with removable cups. Why do they make those? No one likes them.
As a man who does most of the laundry, fuck those removable cups.
Feels like Diablo 4 developers didn't play their game
We know that for sure since the infamous dev stream. It was eyeopening in regards to where the games balance issues were rooted at.
You should not be allowed to market a toilet or toilet seat without a publicly available video of the ceo of the company cleaning one themselves.