Why wouldn’t they want to feel them?
Not stupid but more diabolical.
The vending machine at my work sells yogurt. How are you suppose to eat the yogurt? They sell spoons in the row right under the yogurt for $1 each
Not stupid, exactly, but a mild pet peeve is packets of several socks where each of them is a different colour or has writing that is. Make them all match so they are easy to sort.
I don’t like those, either, but I wouldn’t call it a pet peeve. I just don’t buy that kind.
I used to keep a stash of plastic cutlery in my desk at work for stuff like that.
I have bought an awful lot of socks in my life that weren’t displayed in any sort of bag at all. Why should they be in any sort of bag?
If I’m going to buy an entire dozen pairs of socks, it’s going to be even more important that they feel right than if I’m only buying one pair.
I buy two kinds of socks:
- Cheap cotton mass-market ones from Hanes or Fruit of the Loom and come in a bag by the dozen. There is no need to feel them because they’re all identical. I’m probably wearing the same one that I’m buying.
- More expensive special-purpose kinds like for dress, hiking, cold weather, or whatever. Feel is important, but they don’t come in a bag and I’m not buying them by the dozen.
What about the potential first-time buyer?
The first time I bought cheap cotton socks, I’d already been wearing them for 18 or so years.
Usually the socks in a bag are six or eight white crew socks. The fancier socks are sold in individual pairs and not in bags. And if you’re buying the really fancy socks, you have to wait for the clerk to measure your feet and then knit them for you on the spot.
I’ve even seen those sold not in a bag; just with a band around the pairs holding the correct number together. – have bought them that way, too.
Sure, they’re sold that way as well.
So, as I started off saying – there’s no need to use a bag at all. It’s just yet another unnecessary chunk of plastic, made deliberately to be disposed of.
Most of this packaging is either about keeping the product clean in shipping and display, or about managing pilferage and “shop-wear”.
All of which are about reducing the cost of goods as sold. The plastic is evidently cheaper than the amount of unsaleable socks it prevents.
There is always an argument about whether cost is a perfect proxy for environmental impact. Often it is close, and also often it is far from close.
Well, maybe. But this doesn’t seem to usually be a decision made by the stores. Even at individually run stores, when I comment on excess packaging, by far the most common response I get is ‘yes we know, but that’s the only way we can get it from the distributors.’
Somebody way up the line is deciding ‘that’s how these things come packed now.’ I suppose it’s possible that the decisions are always made after a careful study of relative short-term financial costs of packaging versus possible increases in losses (probably leaving the environmental costs out of it entirely), and never based on the decider having stock in, and/or friends running, or just having a sympathetic ear for the sales force of, the plastic-packaging company.
Are people who feel the socks the same people who squeeze the Charmin?
I buy socks from Amazon. They’re socks. I’ve never felt the need to feel them prior to purchase, and I’ve never been disappointed. They’re socks.
The Disappointing Socks = band name!
Also a good title for a novelty Christmas song.
^
I used to buy the bag 'o socks. But never cared what they felt like. But, as it goes, “Whatever floats your boat”