Reflections On Anything and Everything

On Packaging There are those brilliant and inventive souls who toil long and hard to create products of inestimable value to mankind, products that can save your life or at least make it more enjoyable. There are us, the consumers, who are eternally beholden to those rarely appreciated inventors of life enhancing products. Then, there are the anonymous packaging engineers who strive mightily to protect these precious commodities with incredibly efficient wrapping materials designed to withstand the rigors of transport to the most inhospitable climates of the world. They succeed admirably using the most innovative techniques and materials known to mankind; breakfast cereal comes packaged in airtight plastic with an outer cover of cardboard so cleverly designed that the consumer can re-seal the opened container without the use of clips. Breakfast cereals are not too difficult to coax out of their packages, providing the consumer has strong enough fingers to separate the hermetically sealed plastic tops, but then scissors save the day. Animal pests eager to despoil these wonderful life saving products need to look elsewhere for provender. Electronic items of all sorts are ingeniously packaged so that every item is arranged to take up minimal space, saving shipping costs. After marveling at the packaging expertise and finally accessing the contents, the electronic devices can soon be put to use with the help of ingenious self –installing DVDs that replace indecipherable instructions of a previous era. Some items like batteries need fool-proof packaging to run myriad electronic devices, these must be able to withstand extremes of cold, rain, heat, hurricanes, microbes, tornados, or artillery barrages. These wonderfully created improvers of the lot of man are useful only if the ingeniously effective packaging is finally broached and the contents made available for the sometimes bruised albeit triumphant consumer. With all due respect to those marvelous engineers who so diligently and cleverly encased the batteries in seemingly indestructible plastics, we wonder how on earth are we supposed to remove that covering so we can get at the batteries? A chain saw would be the easiest method but it is sort of unwieldy inside a house. An axe would suffice but the batteries could be rendered inoperative with smashing blows poorly placed. A sharp knife might be used but a glancing cut might make a fingerless owner less willing to use the product once admittance was gained. Sturdy scissors carefully wielded can do the job after much cussing and moaning. What we really need are engineers who can reverse-design their products in equally clever ways so we can use them without creating bodily harm! What to do when you need to return the product after carefully collecting all the cords, discs, instructional printouts etc.? There is no way under the sun that we can re-arrange all the package parts scattered around the room into their original pristine condition, so we cram all the stuff into the box as best we can hoping we did not miss anything (this happens!) and make arrangements for their return. Making Internet connections to “returns” we run into another set of electronic techies who guide us carefully through the procedures, remarkably easy if the techie is a live person. Through his own “tinyurl” he can actually get into your computer and affirm that your computer has a 32 bit processor where 64 bits are needed! So he tells you to print out a return form that shows up on the site, easily done, easily returned with the box contents to the local Fed-Ex office, no charges. Very clear cut. Whew!