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Here, we discuss common items that need a redesign or paradigm shift
- Thread starter tzhu07
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Loose mints in a bowl at the bar in a restaurant that people's hands have been into.
Men's toilet doors that always are push to go in, pull to go out. So you have to use the handle to leave (having just washed your hands), knowing the person before you probably didn't.
Men's toilet doors that always are push to go in, pull to go out. So you have to use the handle to leave (having just washed your hands), knowing the person before you probably didn't.
What's wrong with toothpaste in a tube?
I'm with you, what's the alternative? I'm not sure my supermarket even HAS anything but toothpaste in a squeeze tube.
What's wrong with toothpaste in a tube?
I seem to be the only person who never loses the cap and knows to squeeze it from the bottom.
They have some in plastic bottles that have a lid that snaps. But there is probably a reason that it hasn't become the norm. They're usually much smaller too.
It's all fun and games until you get near the end of the tube, and realize you don't have a fresh one to fall back on.
It's about time somebody said it. I'm waiting until bluetooth connectivity allows me to monitor toothpaste levels, and I'd like toothpaste to tap my teeth once they're adequately clean. Until these features are implemented, I cannot see myself brushing my teeth anytime soon.
Buy a spare and keep it on hand. Problem solved.
I'll send you my bill for this design/paradigm update.
I can make the end of the tube last for days squeezing out that last bit.
So even when you think it's out, there's still another one in there ... if you're willing to put in the work.
Yes, likewise.
I don't have issues with toothpaste tubes; remember to squeeze from the bottom, and (memo to self) remember to replace the tiny one in your frequent travelling overnight bag as that is the one that may run out all too quickly.
One of my personal design abominations were those perfectly horrible aluminium teapots you found in cafés, restaurants and hotels in the 1970s and 1980s in the UK and Ireland. They were like an infestation, breeding witlessly, and found absolutely everywhere…..
They didn't pour, at least, they didn't pour into a teacup, - the spout was too poorly designed and shallow for that. Instead, they dribbled, leaked, and sloshed and poured everywhere else, mostly outside your cup, onto the tablecloth, the saucer, teaspoon and your hand, the plate of sandwiches or cakes, scalding you. You had to use a napkin to mop up the mess, ruining saucers, plates, and table cloths. Then, you had to use a napkin to lift the knob on the lid to remove the tea bags, and you invariably got burned, with a scalding hot lid, yelping and dropping the bloody lid, teabags still inside, the use of a napkin to protect your hand notwithstanding.
I longed for fashion, or common sense, to emerge victorious and consign these horrors to the dustbin of design history. Eventually, proper pottery or porcelain teapots replaced them in the hospitality industry, and not before time.
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Damn your sensible solutions to common, everyday problems. I ain't payin'.
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The thing I hate the most is when it's just about out, but there's still enough for one last squeeze if you do it just right.
After putting in the required effort to finally get that little bit out, as soon as you let up on even the slightest amount pressure to move your toothbrush into position, it gets sucked right back into the tube. It's like it's teasing me. Mocking me. I hate it so much.
Damn your sensible solutions to common, everyday problems. I ain't payin'.
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The thing I hate the most is when it's just about out, but there's still enough for one last squeeze if you do it just right.
After putting in the required effort to finally get that little bit out, as soon as you let up on even the slightest amount pressure to move your toothbrush into position, it gets sucked right back into the tube. It's like it's teasing me. Mocking me. I hate it so much.
I think that the real issue here is that manufacturers of products designed, and intended for use in the bathroom, don't fully realise that the level of concentration of the average user is a lot less than it would be for say, using a tin opener, or making a cup of (real) coffee.
In the kitchen you concentrate, even when you have to dash out shortly; maybe this is because of the plethora of lethal weapons lurking around which repay a degree of concentration.
Whereas, in the bathroom, most of the time, you are (well, I am) thinking of something see (the presentation you must make at work, family nonsense, bills, visits to doctors, dentists, preparation for a class, the report you must write, train you must catch, etc). This means that you begrudge any bathroom product which demand your attention (such as squeezing tooth paste tubes, or trying to extract the last drop out of an impossibly tight moisturiser jar, the one you should have already replaced yesterday, rather than simply aiding your ablutions.
And the manufacturers of bathroom products don't get this. They don't get that some of us are zombies in the bathroom; they think we are cheerful, chirpy types, able to wax lyrical and eloquent about the joys of using their products ...
If anything, I'd say the real issue is my long standing tendency to rail against even the most inane and slight of inconveniences.
If anything, I'd say the real issue is my long standing tendency to rail against even the most inane and slight of inconveniences.
Especially in the morning?
Or do bathrooms - and their products - present equal challenges throughout the day?
Oh, I'm nearly completely useless for the first hour of the day. I can barely muster up the mental energy required to hold up my end of a basic conversation, let alone perform complex manual operations.
As for my overall whininess, that's an all day thing, and it's not reserved specifically for the bathroom.
Damn your sensible solutions to common, everyday problems. I ain't payin'.
All great solutions are sensible or obvious after they've been presented. 20/20 hindsight and "I could've thought of that" are common.
I'll send Vinnie around to collect. He has a way of making things sensible and obvious in very few words.
I have discovered a truly marvelous solution for this, which the margin of this post is too small to contain.
Yup, I buy my toothpaste in packs of 3 tubes (wholesale club) so I usually have at least 2 spares on hand.
One that (happily) is no longer with us is that awfully fashionable fad in restaurants in the 90s for dispensing with silly old (closed) salt cellars and replacing them with the little open containers of salt which one would extract in a pinch. Like in the recipe instructions: "A pinch of salt".
However, the problem that came to light was exactly as you have described with men's toilet doors. Salt dishes were found to contain microscopic traces of left by pinching fingers belonging to unwashed hands.
I deplored the absence of the classic salt cellar - and welcomed them back to dining room tables everywhere when they made a discreet return ...
But will it take us a few more centuries of avid investigation for us to painfully re-discover this, in the lamentable absence of further elucidation on the part of your good self?
My pet peeve?
US-specification automobile license plates.
Here is, for example a 2015 BMW 3-Series with a US plate
And its European spec. alternative:
The European-style license plate is, on just about every level, vastly superior.
Not only is it narrower, fitting into todays sleek, aerodynamic body designs much more cleanly; but its simple large characters are much more easily read by traffic-control systems. And remarkably free of the hideous clutter that turns most US plate designs into hideous billboards for the questionable charms of various locales:
If you want to tell the world how much you love dolphins - buy a bumper sticker. Lets start a movement, here, to bring sanity to the humble US license plate.
US-specification automobile license plates.
Here is, for example a 2015 BMW 3-Series with a US plate
And its European spec. alternative:
The European-style license plate is, on just about every level, vastly superior.
Not only is it narrower, fitting into todays sleek, aerodynamic body designs much more cleanly; but its simple large characters are much more easily read by traffic-control systems. And remarkably free of the hideous clutter that turns most US plate designs into hideous billboards for the questionable charms of various locales:
If you want to tell the world how much you love dolphins - buy a bumper sticker. Lets start a movement, here, to bring sanity to the humble US license plate.
?? What do you have in mind? How about toothpaste in a tub?
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As long as they don't maime or kill you, germs are good!
?? What do you have in mind? How about toothpaste in a tub?
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As long as they don't maime or kill you, germs are good!
Not if they came from someone else's number 2!