I bought something the other day I shouldn't have. It was a little thing, a memory chip for my camera, but it came in a large clam-shell package. I needed the chip, but I swore I would never buy anything imprisoned in such a package.
Unless you have been residing in Mongolia for the last decade, you know know where I am going with this.. But for those of you living in a yurt, let me explain the latest trend in consumer abuse.
The clam-shell package is a clear plastic bubble used to encase retail goods. These containers are formed by fusing tough sheets of PVC in such a manner as to render the packaging impenetrable to finger-nails, teeth, scissors, shears, hedge-clippers, industrial ban-saws, or even a small nuclear weapon.
I can personally attest to using all of the tools listed above to retrieve my memory chip. For over an hour, I swore, tore, sliced and sawed, and yes, in my subsequent rage, eventually went nuclear.
To no avail, I managed only to saw off the top half of the bubble pack.
Being a member in good standing with our volunteer fire department, I borrowed the "jaws of life" to pry open what remained. No luck with that either.
The difficultly of opening these things has become a national issue. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates over 3,000 people go to the emergency room every year as a result of futile attempts to open plastic packages.
We can only conclude that retailers in their enthusiasm for loss prevention and presentation have completely forgotten that consumers buy to consume. Apparently retailers are so obsessed with selling an object that what happens outside their doors is of no concern to them.
On the other hand, retailers used to lock small valuable things away in display cases or tether them to counters by steel cables.
That wasn't good either.
Remember spending long afternoons searching for an "associate" only to mistake a short blue-haired woman wearing an orange vest for staff? Remember her stream of expletives directed at the shoppers crowded around pleading for assistance?
Remember also the look of profound confusion on the face of the associate when you finally asked him to untether the object of your desire?
Remember him saying "Uh, you gotta find the manager" - then your despair when you realized he was the manager?
I swore I would never buy anything so packaged again. I swore this to my wife after she caught me attempting a " full flying power body splash" against a plastic package from atop the kitchen counter
I intend to be true to my word - but I fear the worst.
Due to cold weather and the soaring price of fuel - fresh produce is now too valuable for grocery stores to leave out in the open. In lieu of chaining individual item to the display counters - it is rumored that stores will begin to encase things as small as grapes in individual theft-resistant packages.
© Greg Schiller, 2008
Author: Greg Schiller
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Comments: 38
I got a dvd media card as a gift for Christmas and that thing was in a HARD PLASTIC case like a DVD video case. It also had a lock on the side which I struggled to pry off.
That was by far the worst case to open.
And what about those CD packages?
JoAnne, they do have instructions "Look But Do Not Touch".
WM H. You are right, there should be a redeemable deposit on these things.
Julie, Ouch.
Tom, Fort Knox is easier to get into.
Lora, Stores are redesigned periodically just to keep the consumers off balance. Once we learn the store layout, we just go in and get our stuff - no profit in that.
Aaron, that is my weapon of choice too.
Donna, You don't know where to get a personal nuclear device? Obviously you have never been to a Midwest Gun Show.
Randy, can you come over this evening? I have a bin of things I cannot open.
Paul, My credit card is handy; what number do I call?
Excessive packaging helps stop shoplifting. Excessive packaging helps product stay dry thru the importation process.
In today's electronic world were small things can fetch a high price, having all this stuff behind a counter means employing more people which costs more than packaging.
If the price went up then fewer people would be able to afford these products.
There are alot of things that should be sold and packaged differently. But when purchase price and convenience are the deciding factors, you get that packaging.
So if you truely hate the packaging, don't buy it. Drive your car and find another store which may have a similar product with less packaging. So if you can find one, you have paid more and spent more time driving around looking.
My brother lives in a geodesic structure, we call the "pleasure dome". He is not happy about that - or the dome, it leaks.
The retail industry has finally gotten word that excessive packaging is a problem - the clam-shell will be gone by next Christmas - at least for things not already in the product stream.
This was clearly a case of the industry placing its own needs ahead of the consumer.
No kidding. Think of the poor person in the Asian sweatshop whose job it is to bind all these things. Madness, complete madness.
Last Christmas (true story), it took my son-in-law and I from 8:00 am until 12:30 to untwist all the tight ties to release a series of Rescue Heroes and their various action abodes for my two grandsons.
Another issue: I don't believe unwrapping consumer products is an covered injury under most medical insurance policies.
I am featuring this article on Writing Essentials: Humor Monday. Thanks.
Thanks for featuring the article.
You're right, clam-shells are a "loss prevention device" but I tend to believe that thieves are a whole lot smarter than the average person.
I heard of a case in the north Metro where a guy walked into a men's clothing store dragging a black plastic bag. He approached a rack of $1,000++ suits, grabbed a wad of suits two-feet thick, stuffed them in the bag and jogged out the door.
An honest person would have spent weeks trying to figure out how someone could steal a suit.
We were buying the tangerines in the little wooden crates. Well, lo and behold the garbage man won't take them if they are in the blue box, and with an allowance of only ONE garbage bag per residence, it's too much tear it apart or put it into the garbage bag, so now I just ask them to remove the oranges and put them in the bag. That way they can get rid of the excess garbage.