(With credit to @Beckdawrek for the title).
I had to do some work on the kitchen sink faucet. But first, I needed to shut the water off.
The shutoffs were 1970’s-vintage washer-and-seat valves, and I had to really crank the hot down to get it to stop dripping. When I opened it up again, I had very little flow on the hot side, and I knew that was probably because the washer had disintegrated. I tried to shut it off again, and couldn’t.
So, I went to the hardware store and bought a pair of 1/4-turn compression shutoffs. After fighting with the compression nuts on both the hot and the cold, I was able to replace them both. I managed to break off one of the outlets on the hot side, and looky where the washer was:
Actually, that was only most of the washer - the rest was in the faucet somewhere, but I was able to clear the pieces by blowing compressed air backwards through it.
Having a shut-off that doesn’t is such a terrible idea. I don’t know why these exact same valves are still being sold - they are just a bad, bad, bad idea, and should be banned!