The Occasional Misanthropy
November 28th, 2008 - 5:16 pm
Most recent sign that people are getting dumber: Manufacturers now feel the need to print “OPEN HERE” on flap of individual-slice wrapper around American cheese.
Most recent sign that people are getting dumber: Manufacturers now feel the need to print “OPEN HERE” on flap of individual-slice wrapper around American cheese.
Even though I agree people in general are getting dumber (and I’m pretty sure I am too), I think this might be more of a sign that people are getting older, and blinder.
I think I’ve got a couple years on you (I’m 43). During the past year or two, my ability to discern that little line between the top layer and the bottom layer of a cheese wrapper has decreased logarithmically.
Of course,they’ve probably got the plastic in those things shrunk down to 4 or 5 molecules thick now, so that could be part of the problem too.
I think it’s a sign of ensuring better customer satisfaction, not misanthropy. How many times have you fiddled around trying to figure out which side and which direction the flap is on? It’s only a second or two, but a visual aid usually cuts that down dramatically.
The only reason not to do it is the cost, and that’s not very much when they’re likely already controlling the length to an exact amount.
True of course, Skyler. But you’ll recall, I’m sure, the reasoning of Wonko the Sane, in Douglas Adams’ So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, in building the inside-out Asylum to keep the world in: he had seen a package of toothpicks… with instructions on them.
Thus he decided that the world had gone completely round the bend and needed a nice long rest in a comfortable environment.
All I know is that those instructions were a Godsend to me. I was getting tired of eating the wrapping along with the cheese, since I could never get the bloody stuff off…
Well then, an appropriate follow on innovation would be to print instructions on the cheese itself:
“EAT ME!”
Jaymaster, I read your comment to my wife and she thinks it should be, “Bite Me”.
I admit too to finding Heinz’s recent ketchup labeling campaign to be quite amusing.
DIRECTIONS: POUR ON FOOD
As opposed to, say, various body parts, no?