Am I the only survivor of the Cretaceous who thinks that some of the grand new conveniences, devices to protect ourselves from ourselves (or from bogeymen), and schemes to force us to conserve this, that or the other add up to a collective pain in the butt of titanic proportions? Here are a few improvements that are NOT:
Grounded electrical plugs with one blade thicker than the other, so the thing will only go into the outlet one way: always the other direction from the way you’re holding it. Yes, I know these things keep us safe and I’m sure they’ve saved a jillion people from electrocution by running their hair dryers while standing in a puddle. But they’re still a nuisance.
Consumer-proof packaging, which forces you to purchase a box-cutter and risk slicing your fingers to open anything from soup to nuts.
Electric irons with no “off” switch, designed to force you to unplug them.
Electric irons that switch themselves off if you leave them long enough to walk into the kitchen and pour a cup of coffee.
Electric heaters that come with a glaring, annoying “night light” that will not go off unless you unplug the heater. Yes, I know you should always unplug the heater. I also know you can unscrew the lightbulb and throw the damn thing away, with no ill effect on the heater itself.
Kitchen faucets with dampers on them that dribble out a little stream of water, so that you have to stand there and wait and wait and wait to fill up a pan or the dog dish. The stupidity of these things defies belief. Obviously, when you’re busy and you have five things to do at once, you’re going to set the dog dish in the sink and let the water run while you go on about your business, causing water to overflow and run down the drain. This would not have happened if you could have filled up the vessel quickly.
Showerheads that have to be jimmied to make them dispense enough water to wash the shampoo out of your hair during your natural lifetime. Another stone-stupid invention: obviously, if you have to stand in the shower 20 minutes to rinse the soap out of your hair, you are going to use a lot more water than you would have if enough water poured out of the shower to rinse your hair in two minutes.
Toilets that have to be flushed three times to get the stuff down. Now how does that work? A low-water toilet uses one-third less water per flush, but you have to flush three or four times to make the thing work. Uh huh.
Inner lids on every. damned. bottle. of anything you buy in an American grocery store or drugstore. Yes, yes, I do understand this protects us from the lunatics who want to slip cyanide in our Tylenol. But how many tubes of antibiotic cream have been consumed by people who had to bandage their fingers after slicing them on scissors, knives, boxcutters, or the plastic and cardboard wrap itself, compared to how many lunatics slipped cyanide in the Tylenol?
CFLs. Yes, yes, I do have them in every fixture that will accept them. They are cheap. But let’s face it: the things are ugly and annoying. Their vaguely greenish light is less than perfectly homey, and some people can perceive their fine fluorescent flicker. Put one in a three-way lamp socket, and you have to fiddle through two switches to get it to come on. And when you turn them on, they just sit there glumly, casting a dim and murky light until they finally warm up. Not unlike, say, an old Philco black-and-white television set…
Do these things really make our lives better? What improvements do you love to hate?