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Remember When
Pet peeves that heckle, hound and bedevil us
'Batteries are not included' has become the consumer's national lament
By Cookie Curci-Wright
Everybody has them, those daily annoyances that drive us to distraction: the phone that rings when you're in the shower, the empty milk carton in the refrigerator, the rain storm that always comes the day we wash our car, or that pimple that suddenly appears just before an important date.
One of my biggest gripes is having to plunk out $16 for a tiny replacement battery in order to operate my flash camera. I can't help but remember when I could buy a new Kodak camera for the same price. It seems I'm forever replenishing the batteries in my household flashlights, video camera, TV remotes, electronic thesaurus, electronic encyclopedia, and electronic work dictionary (doesn't anyone read an actual book anymore?), clocks, wristwatches (I own a drawer full of these battery-dead timekeepers), transistor radios, doorbells, portable phones and garage door openers. I no sooner finish, and it's time to start the whole process over again. Ninety-Five percent of the toys under our Christmas tree require at least six C-size batteries to operate. "Batteries are not included" has become the consumer's national lament. Buying replacement batteries at the grocery store, to keep our electronic dependents well-fed, is as routine to us now as is shopping for our family's food supplies.
When the holidays come around, I try to avoid buying anything that comes with the dreaded words: Assembly Required. However, there are times, despite my best intentions, when I find myself involved in following a complex, intricate and perplexing instruction manual in an attempt to assemble a piece of furniture or a child's toy. Nothing raises my blood pressure more quickly than trying to decipher a cryptic instruction manual. For example, I recently put together a microwave table for my mom. The picture on the box looked simple enough, but understanding the ambiguous jargon printed in the instruction manual was another story. The directions, printed in minute letters in three different languages, left me not only frustrated by the time I finished, but with three extra parts and one missing bolt. Now every time I visit Mom, I secretly worry that the table I put together for her is going to suddenly fall apart.
Modern technology has brought us modern packaging, and like many consumers, I can't seem to get past the hermetic seals on some of these packages without a major struggle. Everything from cosmetics to cold cuts comes wrapped in a protective layer of impenetrable polypropylene. I poke, I probe, I tear, I rip, but to no avail. Recently, I struggled for 15 minutes trying to remove the child-resistant cap on my pill bottle. Frustrated, I handed it over to my 6-year-old nephew, who opened it neatly in two seconds flat.
My husband, like most men, has a special pet peeve of his own. He'd like to know where his socks disappear to every wash day. He insists that the matching pairs of socks in his sock drawer decrease by one every time I do the laundry. "They just don't get up and walk off by themselves," he says, with a tone of accusation in his voice. Sometimes, I wonder. . . .
Is it just me, or is it getting more and more difficult to read our monthly utility bills, particularly that three page digest I receive each month from the phone company? I've read novelettes that were shorter and Greek mythology scenarios less confusing. If you've ever tried calling one of these companies to discuss your bill, then you've experienced the true consumer nightmare: the automated phone system! In this process of telephone roulette, the caller never speaks to an actual person; instead, we're connected to a digitally operated recording that instructs us to push buttons in a tedious selection process. Heaven help the consumer whose joints are a little stiff the morning they let their "fingers do the walking!" Press one wrong digit and you're back to square one to repeat the whole darn process. During one of these marathon phone transactions, I pecked out over 40 digits before my patience gave out. It wasn't the button pushing that finally wore me down. It was being put on hold, forced to listen to recordings by Barry Manilow.
I'm constantly reminded that we now live in a whole new computerized world with a language all its own; CD ROMs, Windows, rams, modems, megabytes. However, I'm afraid it's a language that I'll never understand, especially since I still can't figure out how to program the VCR on my television set. Speaking of TV sets, why is it that the TV remote control is always around when I'm not looking for it, but the minute I need it, it's nowhere to be found? The same for our corkscrew. It's always there, staring up at me from the utility drawer, but the minute we have a bottle of wine to open, I can never find the darn thing.
Sometimes I think there are little gremlins or leprechauns living amongst us that go from house to house snatching up socks, corkscrews, and TV remotes, just to put the kinks in an otherwise smoothly running day. Either that, or my memory is beginning to fade. I'm all for believing in the little people--how about you?
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
