5 19 00

Am
I just nuts or what? Don’t answer that until you’ve read all of this. It’s
my understanding that people actually go to school, as in college to study
courses on industrial design and something called ergonomics. I think this
course of study has to do with the design of products that we purchase and how
they relate to us as humans. As in…. does the chair fit your backside? Does
the chair seem to fit anyone’s backside? Could anyone fit into the chair?
Simple questions such as this. What makes absolutely no sense to me is that some
products seem to be designed, financed and produced without anyone ever trying
to see if they actually make sense. 

Example, the other day I went to buy a cordless phone. You know
the kind you use at the house. It sits in a cradle of some sort and you can walk
around the house talking on it without having 25 feet of phone cord following
you around and tangling your feet. So, here I am at the store and I’m picking
up several of these when I run across one that defies being picked up. I mean
this thing sat down in the cradle so far that the only way to pick it up was by
grabbing the antenna and pulling it towards you. Surely I must be doing
something wrong. So, I call the sales guy over and said…"Can you pick
this up?" He tries and has the same amount of difficulty. So, I don’t buy
it and get another one that makes sense. What got me to thinking is this….
Doesn’t some person, some human being at some point say…"You know, we
ought to try and see if we can actually pick this phone up as if we were going
to make a real phone call."? 

Obviously not. These things aren’t cheap. Someone’s money
went into the designing and ultimate production of this piece of junk. Why
didn’t somebody use it before it came out on the market? Another big goof….
Get into some car and start driving, then look at the speedometer. Can you see
it while you’re driving? I rented a car the other week, driving down the
highway, cop pulls in behind me. I look at the speedometer and guess what? I
can’t find it. I can’t see it because the steering wheel is in the way.
There’s no way to tell at any angle how fast you’re going. I get a ticket
for 15 miles over the limit. Wouldn’t you think someone would get into a car
at some early stage of production and look to see if you could see the gauges
and speedometer while you’re driving down the highway? I’d think this is
very important. 

Don’t you? I kind of like knowing how fast I’m going and if
the motor is about to burn up or not. While we’re on the subject of cars.
Answer this…how come the armrest on the driver’s window side is never
convenient for your elbow? It’s either too high or too low or too narrow. Your
elbow takes up room, so having an armrest of about ½ inch doesn’t help you
out in the least. Your elbow keeps sliding off and there isn’t any place to
rest it, is there? Now that we have cup holders for our cars and trucks, you’d
think the people who make soft drinks or bottled water would package them to fit
into the cup holders, wouldn’t you? Nope, no way. I bet 25% of all the drinks
you can buy at the store won’t fit the standard cup holder. So you still end
up with coffee in your lap or ice cubes in the seat while trying to drive across
three lanes of traffic to make your exit. 

Do you think that the people who designed your vehicle ever had
a woman change a flat tire? I mean, it’s all I can do to find the jack, get it
out of the storage compartment and then try and get the wheel off and the spare
on. First off, where is the spare? Generally it’s someplace that you can’t
get to, unless you have the vehicle on a lift inside of a mechanics shop. This
tends to make it easier for you to get he repairs completed, but isn’t always
convenient. Most of us don’t generally have flats inside the repair shop.
Nope, we usually have them out on some dark, wet, muddy road in the middle of
nowhere. Well, enough about cars and trucks. 

Let’s go to refrigerators. Open the door of your average
refrigerator and try, just try, to get one of the bins in the bottom out of the
thing without removing the doors. I mean, you open the door and expect to be
able to open this little bin and get out some carrots, but what happens? The bin
only opens about 2 inches because the door is in the way. The only way you can
get the bin completely out is to pull the whole refrigerator out from the wall,
spread the doors wide open as far as they’ll go and then, and only then, can
you pull the bin out. Woe to you if you spill something in there or let
something spoil since you have to wait until Uncle Charley comes over to help
you.