There’s plenty of bad design out there. There’s plenty of ergonomic what-the-fucks. The “tear here to open” that rips apart. The child-safety cap that requires the patience of Job and the strength of a gorilla to open. Today I’d like to share some of my gripes about these every day problems.

The Corporate Bathroom Towel Dispenser

These crappy things have been dumping armloads of extra paper towels onto the wet floor since the 1950’s. You pull to get a towel and the weight of the others makes it rip. So you tug, thus releasing a torrent of unwanted towels. And let’s not forget the people that leave a half-torn towel stuck in the dispenser so you have to pry and pull with your wet soggy hands just to get the failed process going all over again.

And don’t get me started on the motion-sensor dispensers. They make us look like a bunch of desperate, wet-handed mimes performing Vaudeville at the Moulin Rouge.

Short Faucets

The reason you’re reaching for the lousy towel dispenser is because you just washed your hands in a bathroom sink with a tiny faucet. In order to get your giant mitts clean, you have to mush them up against the back wall of the sink just to get some clean water flowing over them. Is it really too costly to get a faucet that reaches a few inches further? I guess it is.

One Function Shower Control

These things are common in hotels. Trouble is, we never really know what THIS place thinks hot or warm or cold really means, or how long it might take for the hot water to fully kick in. Worst of all, you have no flow control. You get ON-COLD, ON-HOT and OFF. Notice how OFF is the at the far end of HOT, so to shut it off you must first scald your head with boiling water.

I understand why hotels need to control water use, but I’d like them to offer two types of rooms: one for people who can manually adjust two faucet controls and one for the morons.

Low-Flow Toilet

I’m as a big a hippie as any other. I believe in conserving resources and recycling and being nice to the Earth. But I draw the line at low-flow toilets that fail to accomplish their primary mission. I don’t care what the tag says at the store, these things cannot flush man-size turds at all. There’s no point in being “low-flow” when it takes two or three flushes and a stick from the backyard to get the job done. Fuck that. Give me a 5-gallon turbo-action Turd Destroyer. I’m so glad you can still find them at the re-use store.

Coffee Makers

If you want an American-style cup of coffee, be sure to use one of these pieces of crap. Don’t pay too much attention to the fact that the two water calibration lines don’t correlate or that the coffee packet doesn’t really say how much you should use. Just shove the coffee in the bin, fill up the trough with water and pray to whatever God you prefer. You are almost guaranteed to get either feather-light dishwater or sludge from the bottom of an oil barrel. Either way, it will be piping hot, so you’ve got that going for you.

Round Doorknobs

Yes, door knobs! Why did we North Americans fill our homes with these lousy things? You have to have a lizard grip, supple shoulders and an awkward elbow to pull open every door in the house.  These things are poorly designed for the job: causing a latch bolt to retreat. In most homes in Europe, they’ve evolved to the lever push-down handle. It’s easy, it’s reliable, it doesn’t loosen up and it applies great amounts of force with very little effort. Just one more thing those dirty Europeans got right.

Band-Aid Packets

So you just cut your finger. Blood is gushing out. You squeeze the wound closed with whatever rag was on hand. It seems to be slowing, so it’s time for a Band-Aid. But unless you have some decent fingernails and two hands free, you’re not gonna open that packet. And who has two hands free when they’re busy tending to a wound? And let’s not forget those worthless “pull string to open packet” systems they foisted upon us. That stupid red string would slip right out, leaving you with a closed packet, a bloody digit and a head full of fury.

One would think that with billions of dollars of profit, Johnson & Johnson could hire one engineer to solve the problem. But, no. If you don’t like it you can go ahead and bleed to death. See if anyone cares!

Digital Speedometers

These things are stupid on several fronts. First and foremost: unlike an analog speedometer, they don’t tell you much about your acceleration or deceleration. These are good things to know when you’re – you know – driving. Next: it tempts people to glance endlessly at the speedo. 39…40…41…42…OMFG…41…40…39…OMFG! One mph here or there doesn’t mean anything. I want to see where I’m at every once in a while and if I’m accelerating I want to know what the rate is. Finally, these things are poorly solving a problem that didn’t exist. Nothing causes more waste than a marketing team director who “has a great new idea”.

STFU, Mr. Marketing Guy. Just put a speedo in there and let us move on with our lives.

 

Electric Stove Elements

I am plagued with these things. Precise temperature control is impossible. They are ugly as sin and collect drippings and crap, then burn them to uncleanable rusty globs. Disgusting. Worst of all, if you have oil in the pan there is no way to get an even spread because not one of your stove elements is level. Sure, you could prop one end up with tin foil but you’ll never get it right. It’ll just slosh in this direction and that. There is no hope. Give up.

The newer covered induction elements are much better. But nothing beats a properly leveled gas stove. Period.

Mexican Candles

I love these things. They’re a buck apiece and burn for many many hours. Trouble is, they tend to heat up, turning the candle liquid inside. When you blow it out it cools off and buries the wick. Now, when the power goes out you find yourself digging away at the wick in order to tease it out. And when you try to light it, it just won’t stay lit. It drowns itself in wax. So what seemed like an inexhaustible candle turns out to be a one-use waste of money.

Oh, and the photo above says “Ecce Homo”, which is Latin for “Behold the man”, which Pontius Pilate said when producing Christ for the crowd to mock. These candles are not saying Jesus was a homo. I hope we got that all straightened out.

Low Slung Deck Chairs

A descendent of the Kennedy Chair, which was in turn a variation of the Eisenhower Chair, the low-slung deck chair is the bane of the American patio. They look so cool and sleek and inviting, but once you’ve plopped your fat ass in there, you’re not getting back up. You can’t. So instead you give up and start barking commands at the wife and kids. “Get your old man a beer and another cheeseburger, would ya?”

Now that you’re drunk and full of greasy food, the likelihood you’ll ever stand up is gone for good. So you drift off into a nap. Later on, the wife wakes you to let you know the guests have all left and the kids are watching TV. You now have the excuse of post-nap lethargy to ask your wife to pull with all her might and get your fat ass out of that damn chair.

Next Sunday the whole process repeats. But damn – it looks so good on the patio, doesn’t it?

And finally…

Clock Radios

Probably the most lasting and egregious form of bad design, the ubiquitous digital clock radio is the biggest piece of shit ever foisted upon an unknowing world.

The various manufacturers have different schemes for making the various settings and none of these awful designs have improved on the plain old alarm clock. There are wind-up travel alarm clocks that have worked admirably for many decades. Until I lost mine, I’d bring it on trips because it was dead simple and totally reliable.

Nowadays, when you come rambling into your hotel room at 2am and need to set your clock to wake you up at 6:20 sharp, you’re screwed. You can barely focus your eyes on the tiny buttons and text, much less make the logical leaps required to perform the sequence for a reliable alarm. So you call down to the front desk for a wake up call that never comes because someone called in sick that day.

In sum, fuck all these cheap plastic clock radios. I hate them.