Back in 2007 when I was much younger, I wrote a column about things that bugged me: TSA personnel, time sensitive e-mails, body piercing, tattoos, soccer moms on cell phones while driving, people who aren’t handicapped using those parking spaces, baby on board sign in race cars, and motor cycles that take up a whole parking space.
Those things don’t bother me much anymore. They’ve become the norm. I’ve moved on. Even “You know what I mean” is in an occasional thesaurus.
Time has sped by quickly and with it a world of new things have come into my life that make me crazy. A lot of my pet peeves have to do with the way things are packaged now days.
The last time I bought a dress shirt from Al at Dean’s Clothing it was folded and presented beautifully.
But as I started unpacking it, it began to look like it had been in a fight with a porcupine. It must have had 25 straight pins holding its packaged form together. I wish Al would just put his shirts on hangers and spare the expense of the straight pins— and the Band-Aids for my pierced fingers.
Most small to medium-size electronic items sold at Best Buy are bubble packed in hard plastic with no “open here” instructions. The plastic is so thick and hard that it’s impossible to just rip it apart with your bare hands. Only a large box cutter or a machete will do the job. Seven out of 10 times that I’ve managed to get my prize out of the plastic packaging, it was damaged by the machete and unusable.
Music CD’s are a challenge for me, too. They come so tightly wrapped in cellophane it’s impossible to rip off with your nails, teeth or a corkscrew. It’s murder driving home with a brand new Neal Diamond CD and not being able to play it.
The absolute biggest nightmare is trying to repack a 60-inch flat screen TV for returning to the merchant. It can’t be done without having many folded pieces of cardboard or other packing material left over. No matter how many times you try, it just won’t work. You would be better off, health wise, to throw the box away and give the TV to Goodwill. I certainty felt better.