Tuesday, October 30, 2018

"If it ain't broke"


“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.  My hats off to whoever coined this phrase.  It should be hanging over every engineer’s and designer’s desk as a reminder.  If your company is hounding you to perform with the talent you wrote about in your resume, please do so, but don’t monkey with stuff that already is working quite well for me.
For example:  Since Marge and I have a salad almost every day for dinner so I am quite familiar with the dressings available in the market and have a few favorites I use on a regular basis, but always willing to try others.  Recently I was attracted to a bottle of Italian dressing by Kraft that was plastered with labels that told me it was “New”.  Ok, time to try because my beautiful salad and precisely timed dinner was waiting for the application of this new delight.  Well, easier said than done.  Some idiot decided to wrap the top with some sort of indestructible plastic.  All I wanted to do was release the little flip top and taste my new found dressing.  I tried to turn it to break the seal. No luck.  Well, let’s see if my fingernail will do it.  Still no luck.  I next tried plyers.  You guessed it, no luck.  Ahah!  I think I may be able to use a razor knife.  Even that was still unable to remove the now famous indestructible plastic.  Took the razor knife and slit it across the top tab…….success finally.  I flipped the top and prepared to pour it on my now wilting greenery.
Wait!  I see another problem.  Since I usually have a bunch of bottles of dressing with small amounts in them, quite often I remove the top plastic tab and combine several of the partial accumulated dressings so to create a brand new culinary delight.  Mr. “New” design won’t let me do it using this bottle.  The same idiot, I have no doubts, decided to widen the top insert and also made the pouring hole bigger…I guess he decided it wasn’t coming out fast enough.
I know it’s silly for me to get pissed over such a small event, but there are many other examples of changes being made that are not improvements to the item or function.  I did, however, think of one recent change that I can soundly applaud.  The change has probably saved me a great deal of future arthritic pain in the fingers of my right hand  With my recent vehicle purchase I no longer need to worry about things like carpel tunnel syndrome due to the significant strain created by turning the key to start my car….what a relief.  It’s been a real concern for me over the years and I can’t tell you how excited I am to merely push that big button and hear the engine engage.  I wonder what my dealer will charge if a replacement is needed.  You had to figure there would at least be a little sarcasm in the blog.
I could really go on and on, such as the fact that there are probably many starving seniors because they are unable to open containers of food…..all caused by the bastard that poisoned Tylenol bottles years ago.  Packaging might be my Blog’s next bitch.

Till then, I remain your least important author.

Thanks for reading
Bill

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