Rant here about Sadistic Design. (In general)

The BBQ Pit
61

I especially hate that hard plastic casing around lightbulbs. It follows the shape of the bulb so closely that you cannot just cut into the carapace, for fear of shattering the bulb.
How about the changeable mop heads that screw in place with metal screws, which rust and cannot be unscrewed?

I second, third etc CD wrappings. Just when you think you’ve finally gotten that static-cy clingy wrap off, there’s still that annoying sticker sealing the case shut. No wonder people illegally download–that’s enough to drive anyone to Napster or whatever!
Resealable things are the work of the devil. I put everything in a ziploc-I gave up years ago.

And what’s with the aluminum foil box? or the wax paper box? That serrated edge can rip open an artery!

Last one (for now). My MIL bought me a cheap set of Tupperware knock offs. I think they were made by Glad. Could not for the life of me open them, once they were sealed. There was no lip or edge or corner to help lift off the lid. I ended up pulling and struggling, finally ripping the lid off, only to have my macaroni salad or marina sauce go flying across the room… :mad:

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[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
Last one (for now). My MIL bought me a cheap set of Tupperware knock offs. I think they were made by Glad. Could not for the life of me open them, once they were sealed. There was no lip or edge or corner to help lift off the lid. I ended up pulling and struggling, finally ripping the lid off, only to have my macaroni salad or marina sauce go flying across the room… :mad:
[/QUOTE]

So YOU’RE the “before” model in those “As Seen On TV” type ads where nobody can open a simple Tupperware container without spraying soup on every wall, ceiling and floor…

63

So what’s up with bacon packaging?

There is no easy way to open it in the first place. Usually I wind up sliding a knife in as gently as possible between the plastic and the meat. Then, once it’s open, you have to stick your hand all the way in to peel off the slices you want, getting bacon grease all over your hand. This usually has the added effect of also pulling out additional slices that you have to stuff back in, but whatever.

Now you’re left with an open plastic package of meat that’s going to dry out if you put it back in the fridge, so you have to either roll the package up around the torn part and maybe rubber-band it, or you put the bacon into a new plastic bag that can seal.

There’s a lot I am willing to suffer through for delicious bacon, but do I have to suffer at all? Really?

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[QUOTE=Beadalin]
So what’s up with bacon packaging? snip
There’s a lot I am willing to suffer through for delicious bacon, but do I have to suffer at all? Really?
[/QUOTE]

Do what I do, cook the whole thing! Cause it’s BACON!

mmmm bacon.

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[QUOTE=Jayn_Newell]
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:
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Damn you and your patient careful intelligent solutions! We haven’t got time to be opening those things easily. We need to go through the motions of trying to open them with branch-shears/bolt-cutters/chainsaw and then get extremely annoyed at corporate society and the established authority.

66

I too hate blister packs of hard sharp plastic, but I have one of these nifty little gimcracks. Put the Exacto blade in, plug the sucker into an outlet and it’s package opening time baby. Zips right through even the most devious packaging like a knife through hot butter. It seems like a bit to buy just for opening packages, but I already owned one left over from my RC car body making days and now it’s all I use it for.

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[QUOTE=ZipperJJ]
You guys would get a kick out of this month’s Wired magazine cover story Why Things Suck - The 33 Things That Make Us Crazy. The list includes blister packs, DVDs and Lobsang’s last week nemesis, the vending machine.
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I was just reading the one about DVD sound fluctuating between barely-audible and eardrum-wrecking.

It reminded me of something. I recently bought the final series of Sopranos. I decided to listen to them on my PC’s DVD player in my bedroom.

Cue an hour (each episode) of getting out of bed to adjust volume or strain to hear what they are saying, or JUMPING OUT OF BED whenever someone is testing his new machine-gun toy.

Tony Soprano: [suP]“psswssws pswsws ssswwtswsws”[/suP]** DA!DA!DA!DA!DA!**[suP]“psswssws pswsws ssswwtswsws”[/suP]
The thing to remember is, that I am watching this while people the other side of neighbouring walls are sleeping or trying to get to sleep.

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[QUOTE=Student Driver]
Wanted to chime in on this one. This headache is not due to sadistic manufacturers or vendors… they share the frustration, and have lobbied to be able to provide easier to open packages for products geared towards arthritic patients.

The FDA requires child-proof packaging on most OTC products, but allows manufacturers to package one size of each form factor as easy-open (and the packaging has to bear a warning that it is for households without children). Manufacturers have, for the most part, chosen the best-selling package size to be the easy-open: if you want Tylenol Extra-Strength Rapid Release Gelcaps, you can choose from 8, 24, 50, 100, 150, 225, etc., count packages, and the 50 count bottle is the easy-open variant. (Might be the 100 ct, can’t recall exactly.) This leads to the bizarre scenario of, say, Tylenol Arthritis Strength, having only one arthritis-friendly size (100 ct in caplet form, IIRC).

Aleve has a sneaky way of touting their easy-open bottles; they have an entire line of “arthritis pain” Aleve, with all sizes being easy to open. The trick is that each size is a different form factor, thereby following the FDA’s rule: 24 count is gelcap, 100 count is caplet, 150 count is tablet.
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I’m somewhat familiar with the efforts being made to deal with packaging for arthritis sufferers (both through my sister and since I’ve worked in the pharma industry), but occasionally, like in my second example, there is just bad planning going into it, making a package MORE than child-proof.

Admittedly, in my sister’s case, her meds were all prescription, so the fault actually lies with the pharmacists that dispensed them. Those thin twist, line up arrows and pop the top bottles were the ones my sister had trouble with; she could do the OTC push-down-and-turn ones ok. She really hated those bottles, but we kept waiting for the day where she’d get in trouble for carrying around unlabelled ziploc baggies of little blue and white capsules! She never did, but it still isn’t the best idea! “Luckily” for her, she is now using an injectable medicine (Enbrel), which means no pills and no pill-bottles, but she HATES needles!

69

[QUOTE=Sampiro]
Braille numbers on hotel room doors and Braille instruction on driver side ATMs.
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Well, as a matter of fact . . .

70

[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
I second, third etc CD wrappings. Just when you think you’ve finally gotten that static-cy clingy wrap off, there’s still that annoying sticker sealing the case shut. No wonder people illegally download–that’s enough to drive anyone to Napster or whatever!
[/QUOTE]
A guy who works in a CD store gave me the secret to opening the little buggers.

First, run an edge of the CD perpendicular along the edge of a countertop (has to be a countertop with a hard edge). This will split the wrap and you can pull it right off.

Then, unhinge the case so it’s in two pieces, and then pull them apart. You can get the sticker off this way in about 3 seconds flat.

Has saved hours and hours of my life.

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[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
First, run an edge of the CD perpendicular along the edge of a countertop (has to be a countertop with a hard edge).
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Damn it! My countertops all have fluffy edges. :frowning:

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[QUOTE=tdn]
Damn it! My countertops all have fluffy edges. :frowning:
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Yeah, it works best with the old-fashioned formica countertops with a hard right-angle. I have those in my office and they work great. Any edge like that will probably work pretty well, though, like the corner of a filing cabinet or something.

73

I stopped in Lancaster for food and gas partway through a road trip last weekend.

The main streets are divided, and all the intersections I saw had No U-Turn signs. I had to travel a half-mile in the wrong direction, make an illegal turn, and then come back, just to go 100 feet from the fast food place to the gas station.

I mean: what the fuck? Don’t people ever want to get to stuff on the other side of the street there?

74

[QUOTE=iamthewalrus(:3=]
I stopped in Lancaster for food and gas partway through a road trip last weekend.

The main streets are divided, and all the intersections I saw had No U-Turn signs. I had to travel a half-mile in the wrong direction, make an illegal turn, and then come back, just to go 100 feet from the fast food place to the gas station.

I mean: what the fuck? Don’t people ever want to get to stuff on the other side of the street there?
[/QUOTE]

Lancaster, PA or Lancaster, CA?

75

[QUOTE=Lightray]
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.
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You’re probably going to want to kiss me on the lips when I say: I have the one tool that takes care of all three problems.

It’s this thing: Zibra Universal Package Opener. I own one, and it’s awesome. The wirecutter-like shears are offset to snip easily around the edge of hard plastic clamshell packaging without handles or fingers getting in the way. They also slice right through those damn twist-ties. In addition, one side of the handgrip has a retractable boxcutter blade, for miscellaneous cutting jobs, and the other has a fold-out mini Philips screwdriver head for opening battery compartments!

I pull the sucker out every chance I get. It’s awesome.

76

[QUOTE=jayjay]
Lancaster, PA or Lancaster, CA?
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Why does everyone always forget Lancaster OH?
Oh that’s right, because no one would willingly go there. Never mind. :stuck_out_tongue:

77

[QUOTE=Antinor01]
Why does everyone always forget Lancaster OH?

[/QUOTE]

What about Lancaster Lancashire?

78

Mystery Meat Navigation. You know, the navvy bars with only little icons and no names under them?

Maybe not sadistic design per se, but smug and snide design.

I swear I saw one video player in the last couple days that used 2 different kinds of arrows, one kind for cueing and the other for previous/next file, that offered no clue as to which was which until you clicked one.

Usually cueing is one |> or <| arrow, previous is <|<| two or <|| one plus a bar, but noooo. I think this one had previous as <| with just a little boxy tail on the back.

79

[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
Yeah, it works best with the old-fashioned formica countertops with a hard right-angle. I have those in my office and they work great. Any edge like that will probably work pretty well, though, like the corner of a filing cabinet or something.
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Holding it against the door frame and slamming the door on it repeatedly gets the cd out of the package too.

80

[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]
Mystery Meat Navigation. You know, the navvy bars with only little icons and no names under them?

Maybe not sadistic design per se, but smug and snide design.
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Oh, if we’re going to get into talking about web design, I’ll add:

-Websites (often print or physical art/media related) whose home page either looks like a server error page, or sets out precise instructions on how you must browse it (i.e. 'in order to use this site, please install IE7, turn off your popup and ad blocker, set your display to 1024 x 768, enable Javascript and install this Activex control…")

Actually, I guess that’s masochistic design - because it does them more harm than me - I just click away without entering.