Items that are just shit design

[ArseInTheCoOpWindow]

Lever arch files. I’ve never known one last longer than 3 months before all the prongs misalign and the clip things due.

Why are they so shit and yet keep selling and selling?

The ones that piss me off are when there used to be a good thing to do a job, but someone has decided it is old fashioned, and now we have to have a new thing which is shit.

For instance, in cars, why are handbrakes buttons? I want a nice, big, slightly phallic lever please, that "talks" to me with real action about what I am doing with the car and won't let me down.

I am studying and all our "books" are now ebooks. this makes them so much harder to flick through and find things you have seen once. Actually retention is poorer too. I knew this before from reading novels on kindle as opposed to on paper, but it mattered to me less as I wasn't going to be examined on the novel. Young people say this too, not just old people like me!

In open book exams it really is a tough call whether it is worth bothering to refer to the text that is supposed to be your reference, as navigating around it takes ages. We're given a special non-searchable version, which is a clean copy and doesn't contain our highlights. I don't think we should be examined in the same way as others were in the past with paper books; I think there should be allowance made for what a pain they are to navigate when the one feature (text search) that makes them arguably better than a paper book has been taken out (which of course any real professionals using real ebooks for reference at work would use first).

the worst thing is tutors teaching on whiteboards instead of blackboards. When I was a kid in education, someone teaching anything a bit complex would start out on one corner of the board and work through everything, leaving it all there, so that you could always see any part of of it that had already been done and really see how the calculations unfolded. Now tutors use white boards they flick around so you can only see the bit they are doing / showing right now. You have to spend so much longer unpacking it all again in your own time, because you effectively have to do the real part of it again, the part where you see it all together and can remind yourself where everything in the final equations came from. People are always asking "please can you just show me such and such again" and the tutor will flick to that, just as you (or someone else) is just about to get something to fall into place on the bit you are looking at now. This system is a million times worse than an old fashioned black board and I don't know why it is used now, or what is supposed to be better about it.

Cock rings with a vibrator attached that only reaches as far as my urethra.

We have re-purposed the little blue plastic spade from our dd1's seaside bucket & spade set. Much better at the job.

(she's an adult now by the way, and doesn't play with it any more!!)

@jewishmum

Coats do my head in more than anything else. If I’m wearing a coat l want to be warm. I don’t want:

The neck opening to be wide and fasten at my boobs. Why? A scarf doesn’t cover all that!

A coat with no hood

Gappy sleeves or 3/4 sleeves

Shit material that doesn’t keep you warm

Coats with no fastening

Wide coats that let the wind under

All hateful!

Parking apps have started springing up at beach car parks which are well known for not having a signal...

The camouflage design of the lever to access the underneath of my bonnet. Especially when you're car has broken down and panicking the last thing you need is to be fannying around trying to find it
My freezer. The draws are a silly design so that the door doesn't shut properly, don't realise as it's subtle then the freezer starts defrosting

I'm sure I can't think of more

Summer clothes made from polyester so you're sweating like you're inside a plastic bag

Trunki's. Bloody awful things. Hold very little, heavy and impossible to open without at least half the contents falling out. All style over substance.

Small small silicone spatulas are your friend in this instance also work for peanut butter, jam and lots of other hard to get out of Jar stuff

@AgnestaVipers
sorry have to disagree my oxo good grips peeler is fantastic 🥰

My parents bought square crockery thinking it looked cool and modern but it's impossible to drink out of the mugs! Again there's a reason most mugs are round!

You look like a weirdo but an option is to turn the pad upside down so the binding is on the right.
The gaps are the same in the main part of the page although you have to use a right margin or draw your own.
Or just stop writing and use a computer, which also kind of works!

Toy packaging. All of it. You have to destroy the thing to get the toy out.

Years ago, you bought or were given a toy IN A PROPER BOX. You could get the toy out, play with it, and then your mum put it back in the box again. The boxes lasted ages, and of course a lot of the older toys still in their original packaging are now highly collectable.

Nowadays, you end up with huge quantities of toys, bits, small parts, random accessories and goodness knows what else, all mixed up in a series of plastic or wicker monstrosities you had to specially buy for the sole purpose of keeping toys in.

Why???

Pop tarts...the 'handy' breakfast snack for busy people. As they pop out of the toaster smelling delightful and ready to give third degree burns to anyone daring to bite into them...the work of evil.

Toilets with loads of ledges and crevices that are a pain to clean. They are certainly not designed by someone who will have to clean them. Maybe modern ones have cleaner lines (no pun intended) but I have the traditional rounded ones.

@scoobydoo1971 I have yet to indulge in a Pop Tart. Should I give it a go, or not bother?

Also the back and hips. An orthopedic surgeon once told me that human beings were not designed to walk upright. Some stages got skipped over in the evolutionary process, I guess.

Dyson vacuum cleaners. Had one, got very sick of constantly unblocking it, got rid. Never again.

This is kind of my point though.. that’s the absolute minimum you’d expect from a normal car dealership let alone a prestige one! If it’s Bentley or similar for those prices I’d be expecting a mini cafe with service to be honest. Or maybe not even visiting the dealership but you bringing a couple of cars to see me. If the purchase price is a hundred thousand and I’m not buying a residential property I’d be expecting epic service. I’d expect a coffee machine at Renault and even that I think for those type of price points is utterly shit. I’m sure it’s nice where you work but in the bigger picture of ‘sales environments’ it is a crap standard. X

Pop-up tents, pop-up Christmas trees or pop-up anything, and the tiny little bag or box you're meant to get the damn thing back into. Frankly you've got about as much chance as getting a baby back up the birth canal as you have shoving something back in there.

Sorry that was to @PeloFondo! xox

My tumble dryer. I can choose between hanger dry, iron dry and cupboard dry.
That's soaking wet, dripping wet, or wet.

I would like my washing to be dry. The first time I put it in thank you very much. Because an eco tumble dryer isn't very eco when you have to run the damn thing twice just to get dry washing. Neither is it very eco when it takes 4 hours to dry a load of towels.

They are the most hellishly over-sugared synthetic- tasting things, absolute trash, not even my children wanted to finish the box. Stick to toasted sandwich makers, baked beans are our favourite here.

@thecathaszerobrains

That sounds like a filter is blocked in your dryer, that's what sometimes happens to ours when it is.

@TwoLeftSocksWithHoles nope. All filters are cleaned and working perfectly. It was shit right from the day I got it and its still shit.

When it finally conks out I will dance for joy.

Rain showers with no hose attachment. Made by men for men. Women can’t rinse their undercarriage properly without a hose and whoever’s responsibility it is to clean the shower cubicle can’t rinse that either.