Are there any common household items or products that you think are designed incredibly poorly?
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How do you hold closed the bag that holds the bag clips?
Stupid question. With a bag clip bag bag clip, obviously.
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Capitalists compete to make the most money by convincing customers to pay as much as possible for a product that's as cheap as possible to make. The competition argument works in areas that are white-hot with innovation but can anyone honestly say the office chair of 2025 shows thirty years of innovation over the ones from 1995?
I was going to bring up the Herman miller Arron, but that released in 1994!
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I don't think I've ever seen packaging as described in the UK. Normally they're packaged in individual blisters that can be pushed through the foil covering in a single step. I'm not sure about this 'peeling' action that's described.
Also, for what's it's worth, medication in the UK is publicly known by it's International Nonproprietary Name rather than brands, so for the most part people will ask for 'paracetamol' rather than Deludomex
or whatever. 'Acetaminophen' is a new one to me, though.It's not a brand name. Two American companies picked different compound abbreviations at roughly the same time, and somehow one name spread here and the other name spread everywhere else.
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Garlic crushers. All of them suck.
I've found one that seems to suck less. It is at least sensibly designed, easy to clean, and hefty enough where I'm not going to break it. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08WHLDMNX
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I learned long ago when something like this bothers me that it is irrational to get angry at objects, then I connected I am not angry at the object, I am angry at the dumb ass turd who designed it.
btw, I drill a hole in my oil filter before I remove it to drain it so it doesn't spill all over the front of my engine.
Maybe all engineers should have to sign their work. Like have their license number or something embossed on it. That way we can find them and inform them of their idiocy.
I will often drive a screwdriver into the bottom a filter, but this one is impossible to get to and even if I did, it would dribble on the exhaust pipe.
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Some toilets have a perfectly round bowl so they don't stick out as far and take up bathroom floor space - and they work fine, but only in bathrooms that anticipate the vast majority of its occupants to be equipped with a vagina. For those of us rocking a penis, those fucking toilets are horrible - sitting on that damn thing requires you to contort your junk around like some sausage-Houdini as you're sitting, so that you can guide it through the remaining 2 square inches of open space not occupied by your legs or ass. Then when you're actually seated, you still have to sit there and awkwardly hold the thing so it stays pointed straight down.
Fuck up any part of that, and the tip of your dick hits the seat or the inside of the bowl.
...and they must be like $3 cheaper than an oval toilet or something, cuz 99% of US apartments seem to be equipped with the round, vagina-only toilets.
Oval bowls are the way. No matter what's in your pants, it gets the job done without the significantly increased biohazard risk.
I guess in fairness, the problem isn't with their design, it's with the people who purchase the toilets treating them as sex-neutral when no the fuck they aren't!
I had to get a stupid round one because it was the only one with a 10" rough-in (distance from wall to toilet drain), standard is 12".
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I have a truck where the oil drain plug is directly over the axle. I have to strap an offset funnel under the drain to get it to not splash all over the fuck, and of course, it's not easy to get that stay put so inevitably I have oil everywhere. Same truck has the oil filter tucked up where I need a special oil filter wrench with a ratchet and extensions to remove it, and when you pull the filter out, you have to tip it so it spills the oil inside everywhere.
I had an idea a long time ago of a website where you can crowdfund a private investigator to find engineers that do shit like this, and a crew to go over to their house and beat them halfway to death.
If we're also talking about vehicles... I'm about average height (~180 cm) but have long-ish legs, and this means that I simply don't fit well into the driver's seat of most cars. Even with the steering wheel adjusted all the way up, seat slid all the way back and reclined all the way forward, my legs are hitting the steering wheel and yet I can barely reach it with my hands. Because of this, I sometimes have to take my shoes off while driving.
Also, almost every car has some annoying things like your oil plug; simply because a modern combustion engine is really quite complicated and there's not enough space under the hood to give every component a convenient place. E.g. my Delica has the starter located below the engine and quite far back, so it's mostly covered by the engine protection plate. Good luck banging on that starter relay if it sticks in the off position and refuses to start, while you're stuck in the mud! However I do agree that making periodic maintenance painful, like in your case, is way worse.
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US can openers. In other countries, they cut the sides of the can not the top, so the lid has no chance of falling in while dulling the edges. It also allows them to be much smaller and easier to use.
I don't know what "other countries" you're talking about, but where I'm from, a "can opener" looks like this:
(I've been using one just like this for my entire adult life, and guess what - it's ok!)
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I bought this can opener after watching a Technology Connections video, and I kinda love my can opener.
Same. I should really learn to use a simpler one, but I love this model and it still seems rock-solid to me after years of use. The best part is not ending up with sharp, dangerous edges on the lid!
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I have a truck where the oil drain plug is directly over the axle. I have to strap an offset funnel under the drain to get it to not splash all over the fuck, and of course, it's not easy to get that stay put so inevitably I have oil everywhere. Same truck has the oil filter tucked up where I need a special oil filter wrench with a ratchet and extensions to remove it, and when you pull the filter out, you have to tip it so it spills the oil inside everywhere.
I had an idea a long time ago of a website where you can crowdfund a private investigator to find engineers that do shit like this, and a crew to go over to their house and beat them halfway to death.
About cars, and not necessarily designed poorly, but definitely designed by a man for men: cars that, by default, automatically, immediately unlock all doors when the engine is turned off. A man might be car jacked or robbed, a woman might be car jacked, robbed, or raped.
(Of course men can be raped too, but it's not as likely to happen by a strange woman threatening violence than a woman is to be raped by a strange man threatening the same.)
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Capitalists compete to make the most money by convincing customers to pay as much as possible for a product that's as cheap as possible to make. The competition argument works in areas that are white-hot with innovation but can anyone honestly say the office chair of 2025 shows thirty years of innovation over the ones from 1995?
Office chairs, no, but massage chairs have.
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I bought this can opener after watching a Technology Connections video, and I kinda love my can opener.
Same. Then I had to hear an endless stream of whining for over a year because my other half likes the old style for reasons. It got so bad I bought them a shit one for Christmas, and now I'm faced with the stupidity of having 2, but the sadness that I'm gonna end up putting the good one in the donation bin because reasons.
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The only thing more poorly designed than a regular keyboard is a keyboard where they try to cram extra functions into the same number of keys with a FN key. Every brand does it differently, no consistency even within the same brand sometimes.
Honestly my bigges complaint with extra layers is when the manufacturer decides that nobody needs to use modifiers with them.
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I'd tend to chalk that up to user error, if you're putting enough force on your toilet paper holder to pull it off the wall you're doing something besides just pulling toilet paper off of it or maybe you installed it with the world's shittiest drywall anchors
Every thing permanently installed in a house should IMO be designed to support one human of weight from above, especially in a room that will have a wet slipery floor.
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We did.
Boxed wine.
However, bottle design is pretty refined, and they are quite reusuable.
Ok so my father makes his own wine, at home from kits/concentrate. He makes a lot of wine and drinks a lot of wine (and gives a lot of wine away as gifts)
One day he called me, and he was so excited. Like if he wasn't a 61 year old man I would have guessed he was going to announce his pregnancy.
"You won't believe it! The wine place is selling bags now!!! So I can put my wine in bags and put those in boxes!!!! Omg why didn't I think of this?! Think of all the time saved with corks and recorking!"
It was a happy day for him, certainly.
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If we're also talking about vehicles... I'm about average height (~180 cm) but have long-ish legs, and this means that I simply don't fit well into the driver's seat of most cars. Even with the steering wheel adjusted all the way up, seat slid all the way back and reclined all the way forward, my legs are hitting the steering wheel and yet I can barely reach it with my hands. Because of this, I sometimes have to take my shoes off while driving.
Also, almost every car has some annoying things like your oil plug; simply because a modern combustion engine is really quite complicated and there's not enough space under the hood to give every component a convenient place. E.g. my Delica has the starter located below the engine and quite far back, so it's mostly covered by the engine protection plate. Good luck banging on that starter relay if it sticks in the off position and refuses to start, while you're stuck in the mud! However I do agree that making periodic maintenance painful, like in your case, is way worse.
Oh, there's a few engines like the Northstar and the Toyota 5.7 where the starter is actually under the intake manifold, effectively inside the engine. The amount of stuff you need to take off to even see the starter would make your eyes water.
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those hooks are perfect for hanging two t shirts on, or a zippered/buttoned clothing, or even skirts
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For the topic of the thread I'll throw in "toilets that are so bad at flushing that you need to keep a plunger next to them"
The only time I've owned a plunger was in a house with a broken clay sewer pipe that was about to kick the bucket.
I redid the bathroom when COVID hit (was walking around home Depot the day before the shut down frantically buying 3 of everything so I had a chance to do this without being able to make the customary mid-project visits)
The toilet we got was not the one I wanted, it was 4 or 5 on our list of "toilets the Internet says are good " and boy howdy the Internet was wrong. This toilet wouldn't flush piss. I'm not kidding I didn't notice at first but a couple days into "man this toilet didn't like to flush our shits, they must be mighty" I had a pee that was dark enough that once I flushed I read like "wtf". 3 flushes for the water to be "clear" as I could tell.
This isn't a 2 button eco toilet.
I ended up finding a guy online who had extended the tube inside the tank to be just shy of the rim, thus allowing the tank to fill up more and more water to be sent down with each flush. Whatever eco feature it had in sure it's now among the worst water waster in town.
And it's still a terrible toilet. It has some sort of extra funnel port in the front that I guess some of the water flushes through to help direct the shit and water down the pipes. But it gets dirty and is unreachable with every toilet brush I've tried, and not visible even if you jam your head down as close to the water as you can and look back. This means that the flush stops working and then I have to go in with disposable chop sticks and chip away and the shit fossils blindly until the port is clear again.
Yes I tried soaking with green goblin and leaving the blue duck to soak, still need to physically mine the area clear....
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I have a truck where the oil drain plug is directly over the axle. I have to strap an offset funnel under the drain to get it to not splash all over the fuck, and of course, it's not easy to get that stay put so inevitably I have oil everywhere. Same truck has the oil filter tucked up where I need a special oil filter wrench with a ratchet and extensions to remove it, and when you pull the filter out, you have to tip it so it spills the oil inside everywhere.
I had an idea a long time ago of a website where you can crowdfund a private investigator to find engineers that do shit like this, and a crew to go over to their house and beat them halfway to death.
Cars are designed by people who don't do maintenance themselves.
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permanently installed lamps with a socketed power supply that sticks like 10cm out of the wall.
to add to this, non removable cords just need to die, there is almost never significant cost to make the cord tetachable and it allows the user to replace the cord after it inevitably gets eaten by a vacuum or breaks of metal fatigue.
