For example - Those security keypads for room-entry that are fairly common. They have been designed for the fingers of a toddler, with the strength of an adult, and a knob rather than a lever. Like they want authorised personel to suffer every time they get into any room they are authorised to be in.
If you have a hint of a fingernail* it’s even worse, your fingernail presses the button near the button you are pressing with your finger, or, because of the force needed to push the button down your fingernail simply breaks.
Didn’t they, you know, think about the design? (Wait - Yes they did. They thought along sadistic lines though)
[sub](*Yes, I’m a straight guy with fingernails!)[/sub]
Another one is food packaging made of that particular type of plastic which once opened, will tear all the way across if you so much as breathe within a five mile radius of it. You open it, fine so far, you reach in for a crisp/sweet/mini pastrami bagel, and a neat line travels all the way down to the bottom of the packet and everything must be cradled in order to keep it contained.
Those damned molded hard plastic…THINGS that are on every fucking thing these days. Scissors barely work on them, because of the shape, a knife will only get you so far. I HATE them.
Like when I got my shiny new cell phone, I couldn’t get to it for 10 minutes because I had to figure out a way to get that damn hard plastic off of it.
And you’re lucky if you don’t sever an artery when you do manage to cut the damn thing. That stuff makes SHARP edges!
We have one of those on the outside door of our office building. Ours may be even worse…there’s the little knob that moves the bolt once you’ve put in the code, but it’s too small to offer even the leverage that a regular doorknob does…you have to pull the door open with a panel-type door pull WHILE you keep the bolt knob turned! God forbid you’re carrying anything into the building…
Any sort of sticker that uglifies the thing you bought, but is stuck on with God’s Own Super Glue.
Look, Mr. Coffee mug maker, I want to take off the stupid “Holds Coffee!” promotional sticker without either using industrial chemical solvents or leaving behind a permanent sticky three inch circle. Nothing I have ever bought from Japan has this problem. They [shock] used a glue of appropriate strength [/shock] You think you might waddle yourself easterly and ask them? Thanks.
Arthritis medicine in child-proof containers. My sister took to carrying around her meds in ziploc baggies because it was easier. Several times, if she was home alone and it was time for her meds, she had to go to the neighbours to ask them to open the container for her. That makes me incredibly sad to think about!
A company I worked for was manufacturing a new drug for patients with heart disease (AFAIK, the drug is still in development). Initial packaging had the pills in a cardboard blister pack, with some bizarre pictographic instructions. As far as we could tell, the patient was supposed to take the drug 8 times a day, three when the sun was out and 5 under the moon. The blister pack was also, as I said, made of cardboard, and actually impossible to open and remove a pill with your bare hands. There were no pull-off corners, no perforations, nothing. Just hard cardboard. We kept imagining 95 year old men with failing hearts having their final, fatal heart attacks while trying to open their heart medications!
I was pleasantly surprised to discover the product Goo Gone, which almost always takes the sticky gunk off plastic things.
I vote for the plastic blister-type packaging that small consumer electronics always come in, which invariably requires industrial shears to open and frequently results in you cutting through a small wire or something.
Preach it! AMEN! I don’t know how many of my good sewing scissors my husband has ruined in his frustration to get those damned things open. That sort of packaging must be either very cheap to make, or is particularly resistant to being stolen. Or possibly the manufacturers just don’t think about the consumer.
I’ll third your’s and Antinor01’s hatred of those plastic blister packs… try opening ones containing toys at Christmas – the one containing a doll I bought my niece then had two dozen wire twist ties holding the contents to the backing board.
We left-handed people usually can adapt to situations where objects have been engineered for righties, but every so often I come upon one thing I cannot get around: If there is a three-ring binder with big rings, and there is some sort of ledger on the right-hand page, and I am expected to write on the left-hand side of the right-hand page, then, well, I just can’t.
Ahhh, the children’s toy packaging nightmare. Was going to post that too. Nothing is quite as fun as struggling with umpteen twisty plastic-coated wires while small children are freaking out with “new toy!” excitement. If you distract them with another present, soon every adult in sight is struggling with evil packaging – and the kid is about having an epileptic fit.
And, of course, if you ever do get the damn thing out of the packaging, it always turns out that batteries really weren’t included, and now not only do you have to search for the well-hidden battery compartment, but you also have to find some itty-bitty phillips head screwdriver to open it with. Probably in some convoluted process requiring at least three hands to do. Which – again – is not helped by the freaking-out kid who just wants to see the train drive around its track.
Take a decent knife or scissors, scor down one side of the back until you break through, cut along that entire side and around the corners, insert hand, and pull. The hard part is always getting the first opening–once you get them open a little, they’re not that hard to pull apart. Don’t bother trying to get through front and back at the same time, it’s too thick, and the edges are horrible to cut through, just work on one side or the other.
But yeah, they suck, and I hate them too. And they’re invariably a foot and a half long for every 6 inches of product :dubious:
Cereal. Or rather, cereal packaging. In the whole history of dry cereal, the packaging has actually gotten less friendly.
Make me a box that I can open and will re-seal effectively. Inside of that bow make a bag that is not either:
A) That plasticky crap that never opens along the glued line so you have to rip it wide open.
or
The waxy shit.
Also, neither of those bag materials can ever re-seal properly. No matter how tightly it gets rolled up, the next time you open the box (which is probably already open because slot A is torn from being opened and so tab B is useless) it’s all unrolled again.
[quote=Braille numbers on hotel room doors and Braille instruction on driver side ATMs.[/quote]
Blind people aren’t allowed to find their hotel room without being guided by a seeing person? And I had a blind friend who routinely would walk up to the drive-through ATM near her house. What, she shouldn’t be able to use the ATM on her own?
I got some heavy-duty “Ultimate Craft Scissors” that work beautifully on those heavy plastic blister packs. They cut through multiple layers, even. I highly recommend them.
And for getting rid of industrial strength glue? WD-40. Works like a charm.
It’s very rare that I have to do this without it being possible to remove the page and insert it when Im finished. But when the situation arises, I simply rotate the binder 180[sup]o[/sup] and write upside down and backwards.
