The front door to my office building is secured by a horizontal “crash-bar” type lever, which is connected to two vertical rods. One rod goes into a catch on the floor, and the other into the top of the door frame. You push the crash bar, the top rod moves down and the bottom rod moves up, and the door is free to open. Simple enough concept.
BUT… The force needed to activate the mechanism is greater than that needed to move the door on its hinges. So, when you push the bar, you’re also pushing the release rods forward against the catches, which prevents them from moving up and down. The harder you push, the more resistance you create to actually opening the door! It takes just the right touch to get this damn thing open without looking like a fool, and I’m not the only one who has trouble with it. Just one little pain in the ass to help brighten my day.
What stupid little annoyances like this are you forced to encounter?
I have this digital alarm clock. It’s the kind where you have to “fast-forward” and “slow-forward” through the minutes in order to set it. If you wish to set the time backward by two minutes, what you must actually do is spin your way through 23 hours and 58 minutes. This single feature, all by itself, is pretty bad design. In this case though, there’s an extra irritation.
To set the alarm time, you press and hold the Alarm button while simultaneously pressing and holding whichever forwarding button you’re using. It’s easy however to get fatigued while waiting, or to slip just a little bit, and let the pressure off of Alarm. At that moment, the clock’s actual time starts racing into the future. You might catch this right away, you might not. In any case, you now have to go fix that little problem — spinning through nearly 24 hours’ worth of minutes, again, just to put the time back to where it already was when you started.
Oh, I hate that method of setting the alarm, but it’s what so many alarm clocks use – including the one by my bed. I wish clock radios and such would be more explicit about how to set their alarms on their packaging or advertising so that I could choose them by this criterion. But generally they don’t say anything.
Quite a few years ago I saw an ad for a Sony clock radio that had a uniquely easy way to set the alarm: Two knobs, one for the hour and one for the minutes. You just turned the knobs to point to the time you wanted to set the alarm for. Any alarm time at all could be set in just a few seconds. I should have bought that clock radio when I saw it, because I never saw it again and I don’t think Sony makes it, or anything like it, now.
I’m dearly sorry to hear that. I’ve been fantasizing about buying a replacement clock (my dreams are pretty modest I guess), and was hoping to avoid this dumb feature in the new one. Sounds like it’s hard to be sure of what you’re getting.
Notice that the front of the building has a double point. The building has been nicknamed “The Madonna Building” because of how it resembles certain of her attire.
Notice that there is [del]an obstacle[/del] a decorative display directly in front of the doors.
Notice that there are [del]tripping hazards[/del] decorative plants that line around the front of the building.
Notice how the sidewalks do not provide a straight path from anywhere, but rather consist of zigzags.
If someone parks on the far left of the building, it is actually easier to walk around to the back of the building and enter there.