No need to run out of toilet paper...

Tescos today.  18 items bought.  Receipt is 80cm long.  Didn't even need a receipt really.  Waste paper.  Planet doomed.  Tescos fault...

Packaging

When I was a kid I used to think that packaging (and other aspects of the world, but that’s a different matter...) were in a constant state of continuous improvement.  In other words manufacturers would work out what worked (for consumers I naively thought) and packaging would get easier and simpler to use as time went on.  It turns out that’s not true.

This morning I’ve half pulled a finger nail off trying to prize open a cardboard box full of Becks (more rock and roll than lawnmowers eh readers?), completely failed again to find any way of using the strip of sticky tape stuff attached to bags of ground coffee, got orange juice all over and failed to open a yoghurt.

Orange juice first.  I used to be able to open Tescos cheap orange juice – you ripped or cut the top and you were in!  You just had to be a bit careful not to squeeze too hard or to spill any.  Then they introduced their 'irony range' of packaging.  Somebody was surely having the smirk of their lives when they persuaded their Tesco bosses to call the new cartons ‘easy open, easy pour’ - because the plastic bit has to be pushed down so hard to open it orange juice always squirts out, and pouring only becomes possible without a dishcloth or kitchen roll when it’s about ½ empty. 

 

Beer – some types of beer come with semi-serrated bits on the box with a tab to pull which sometimes works (a bit like the ones that virtually never work on tissue boxes) but otherwise there just doesn’t seem to be a way of opening apart from pulling one of the end tabs with massive angry force.

Coffee – Not only is the ‘cut here’ mark always slightly higher than the place where you actually have to cut the bag to open it but there is simply no way of using the bit of tape to reseal the bag when you’ve just opened it - it’s still too full and the tape isn’t long enough or sticky enough.  When it’s mostly empty the rolled up bit of bag is too springy to be held down by tape of any sort and by then the tape has got coffee and other bits of stuff on it so as to render it stick free anyway.  There may be a sweet spot about half way down the bag but I’ve never found it.  I use clothes pegs.

And if you were wondering about that yoghurt - I stabbed it with a big knife!

 

Thing is that I'm sure package manufacturers have design people.  Presumably they either employ idiots or they ignore what they advise in favour of keeping costs down...

Size is really wasteful and annoying

Dear supermarkets, petrol stations and all shops.  Could you please fix it for me next time I buy anything to LET ME HAVE A RECEIPT THAT'S LESS THAN 2 FEET LONG?!!! 

A single receipt would be nice - Ideally just one piece of paper.  Perhaps 2 or 3 inches in length.  Also, I'd like not to have an advert for 5p a litre off petrol that you don't sell at your supermarket or for discounts on things that I've never bought before but your computer tells me I might be interested in.  And I don't need a receipt for my shopping and a separate receipt for the method I used to pay for my shopping.  You could actually not give me a receipt at all on most occasions if you like.

Cheese, Doctor Tesconstein?

I thought we had a rogue batch of Tesco’s ‘Value’ cheddar cheese recently but it turns out that Tesco’s ordinary ‘Mild Cheddar’ is also weird and unnatural.

Thing is that Tesco’s cheese appears to be indestructible and could perhaps be used as a building material in sub-Saharan Africa. IT WILL NOT MELT! On toast it sits there and goes brown but stays stubbornly in the shape in which it was cut. Cut it into small chunks and boil it up with milk in a saucepan and you get white sauce with rubbery chunks in. Try making cheese sauce in the microwave and the milk boils away while the cheese sits there like rubber coated single Lego bricks. I guess this means that the emulsifier is cheaper than the cheese (as well as being indestructible). Or that Tesco’s customers have been complaining that their cheese keeps kind of like, melting on their ass and this is kind of like, bad? But I’ve lived for decades with the belief that cheese is something that melts when heat is applied. And now the rules have changed and I'm left angry and confused.

Another plank of what I had fondly believed was 'reality' is torn apart by capitalism. Mind you, I’ve also believed that politics was about changing things and that unopenable packaging would give way to practical, ergonomic designs. And I still know people who think that ‘juice drink’ is juice and that what appear to be slices of ham (or whatever) are actual slices of ham (or whatever). To finish on an optimistic note, I did have the little red stripey bit successfully open a KitKat once...