I only have problems with mechanical watches. Electronic are fine with me. But I found that if I used a metal plate that hooked under the watch band and kept the watch about 1/8 inch off my skin I had no problems.
oh look another old thread I already answered and basically wasted time answering again. F###ing zombies.
It’s very much like eating. Some people grossly underestimate how much they eat in a day, and they will swear on anything that they’ve only eaten X amount of food. If someone were to monitor them, they’d be off as much as 30%.
There are people who are just good at ruining certain things – in this case: watches – but will swear it was a new battery (from where? Someplace that has an old stock?), or swear that they always take it off when they should, or swear that they aren’t too rough with it, or that they don’t over wind it… and the list goes on and on.
When it comes to certain mechanical things, the person destroying the mechanical thing will swear on anything they took care of it. Yeah, well, I know a few people that can destroy any automobile in short time, and they swear on anything that they aren’t hard on cars. Okay, take a few rides with them and watch them over a period of time and you’d be mortified by what they consider ‘taking care of something’.
Anyone who can’t keep watches working, and swears they are taking care of them, or using the proper battery, etc: ::FINGERS IN MY EARS GOING LALALALALALALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU LALALALALALALALALA::
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I think you’re on to something; my watches also were always breaking, but I never broke another one after getting a girlfriend
Let’s make a couple of assumptions: there are a billion people who wear routinely watches in the world, and that 1% of watches are badly made and will die within a year of purchase.
In our thought experiment all 1 billion buy a watch on 1 Jan of a given year. 10 million of those watches die in that year and those people all buy a new watch. In the second year 100,000 of those who bought the second new watch have to buy a third one. In the third year 1,000 people have to buy a fourth watch, and in the fourth year 10 people need to buy a fifth watch. Those 10 people post on internet forums about how they mysteriously kill watches.
If you spread out the initial purchase of watches amongst the 1 billion over, say, 10 years it makes no difference to the maths, you still end up with 10 people who “kill” watches.
There will of course be people who treat watches badly, and watches that are worse made than others, and these factors will raise the numbers. Treating watches well and well made watches are already accounted for in our initial assumptions so those factors don’t decrease the number.
I actually did this when I was in 6th grade. I rubbed the watch and willed it work and it did, but I didn’t think it was physics I thought I was psychic.
I break watches but I’m not magnetic, I just tend to whack them on things or get them wet too much. I finally gave up wearing them.
I, Salinqmind, have killed dead more watches than you can believe. I do have a cheapie that keeps on tickin’, though. It’s set in a bracelet made of big chunks of lapis lazuli. Maybe that blocks the death rays.
Some watches are sold with a bad battery. A few years ago, I bought one that only lasted me a few months. Let’s say that, say, one watch in ten is sold with an almost-dead battery. Now, let’s say that a whole lot of people buy watches. One person in ten gets a bad watch, and so has to get a new one. OK, of those folks, one in ten will get a bad watch again. Those folks have to buy a third watch. And of those, one in ten will again be bad, so one person in a thousand will end up getting three bad watches in a row. At this point, most folks would just come to the conclusion that they have a propensity for killing watches and give up on getting another one, so you’ve now got one person in a thousand (a large enough proportion that most people will know such a person) who is convinced that they will kill any watch they wear.
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I know of several people who have problems with their computers. Yet I find nothing wrong. But the moment they starting using their computer again, it stops working. Over the years I’ve run my own experiments. I’ve gone so far as to build out a computer, use several applications and determine it to be functional. Then I deliver it to the person, complete with instructions so they do exactly what I just did. The computer stops working and I’m there the whole time observing. They get up from the computer and and I begin using it, only to find nothing wrong. I stop, move away and have them attempt to continue. Complete failure. (The only difference is it’s their fingers on the keyboard and not mine.) I’ve done this long enough with several different people with a variety of computers and arrive at the same results.
</hijack>
In my workplace there is one specific piece of equipment that is attached with a hinge that has to be lifted up to allow it to swing out of position. It gets “stuck” for some of my coworkers pretty much anytime they try to do it. I am always informed that it must be “jammed” by dirt in the hinge. Every time I walk over, and open it by lifting with one finger, and swinging it out. This is explained to me as being caused by them working it loose struggling with it, and me just lucking out.
The thing is, if you lift at the far end of the hinged piece, you put a torque on the hinge pin so it binds up and won’t lift all the way clear. So, the retaining system that keeps it in place in use still keeps it in place. I started the one finger method when I was told “Well, I am not strong enough to lift it up like you.”
Multiply that by the level of complexity of a watch, compared to a hinge. Yes, there are some people who break watches. Hell, I am one of them! But I don’t need magnetic fields, or primative animism to explain it. I am careless of my watch. It gets wet, gets dropped, and if I have one, I generally have no idea when I got it.
Tris
I once worked with a guy who claimed his brother made watches run backwards, and nobody could figure out why. I always found it hard to believe but he had nothing to gain by making it up. This is the second time I’ve ever heard this claim. I’m intrigued.
Sure he does, he gets notoriety, which some people crave.
My mom has had this problem her whole life as well. She’s never been able to wear any type of watch without it dying a few days later (and she’s tried several kinds), wearing them around her neck, etc. They just don’t work, and not because she bangs them around or winds them up too much. If she gives them to someone else it’ll start working again after a couple days. She read somewhere that people who have technically “died” and then came back to life have this problem, which makes sense for her since her heart stopped beating for a few seconds when she was born…
(for those with computer problems…this is a pretty cool story)
Coincidentally enough, I bought a new Casio at our local Sears early last December, (replacing an identical model purchased seven years ago that still worked, but with a dial so discolored that it was hard to read). Early in January the new one started acting squirrley, randomly loosing 1 to 10 minutes a day.
Yesterday I took it back to Sears, and discussed the problem. The had me take it into a local watch repair, and have the battery checked. I did, and the battery turned out to be very low (after only two months). So they put in a new one and the watch seems to be OK.
During my discussion with the Sears watch people they did say that they had found that some folks couldn’t keep an electronic watch going more than a few days.
By the way, the reason I got an identical model is that I didn’t want the hassle of going thru another 80 page instruction manual just to tell the f___ing time. Getting too f___ing old for that!
I have had a Seiko Quartz watch for nearly 20 years. I replaced the original battery after 4 or 5 years with a battery from J.C.Penny. That one lasted 6 or 7 years. I replace that one with another one from J.C.Penny and it lasted for another 10 years. Well, I no longer am living in the US, so I replaced it with a battery from a watch repair shop. No telling if it will last or not. My daughter gave me a quartz watch a few years ago and it, the watch, didn’t last more than a year and a half. Certainly not as good a watch as my Seiko. I think it was a Citizen.
My ex mother-in-law had this problem but hers would stop working within hours no matter what kind if it had a battery. She went through numerous texts and was told she had more electrical current in her body than an average person…put simply. This tends to happen with people (according to her specialist) that have been exposed to electric currents at higher levels… electric shocks etc… She found that if she place a piece of felt on the back of the watch that completely covered the metal back, she no longer had this problem. My fiance’s father also has this problem with wrist watches only. I suggested that he attempt the felt on the back of the watch and after 3 months his still was working. First time in years he could wear a wristwatch without a problem. Just thought I would suggest this as an idea for those that do have this problem.
:dubious:
This “specialist”… was he or she an MD?
do these people ever try wearing their watches without batteries to use up some of that energy?
I’m 55 years old and of sound mind and pretty much body. Ever since I was a kid with my first Timex wind-up watch, I have never been able to keep it running beyond a few days. They always lose time right away and very soon stop working altogether. I’ve tried many kinds of watches–battery, self-winding etc. and have never found one that would work for more than a week or two. Can’t explain it.