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?

And the inability to vomit

My fridge freezer. It has 2 drawers in the bottom of the fridge part for veg but anything in the bottom drawer freezes. It doesn't matter what you do to adjust the temperature you still end up with frozen carrots etc and if you accidentally put any salad in it then it's ruined. Also, it's virtually impossible to line everything up to get the shelves and drawers back in if you take them out for cleaning. You have to slot in at an angle then drop over a bump in the solid bit acting as a runner. However, once it's in the drawer seems to shrink in width and drop off one side so it rests on the drawer below.

Henry hoovers - love the fact they are virtually indestructible, however it falls over all the time and gets hose wrapped around itself.

My pet peeve though is dishwasher arms that get clogged and you then can't open them to unclog. Hours spent with pins trying to get a grain of rice out! How hard would it be to be able to open them?

Cling film, cling film, cling film - oh, and have I forgotten cling film?

Also, the own brand loo rolls where the next sheet doesn’t hang down but sticks to the rest of the roll so you spend ages winding the roll round to find the end. Oh, and while I’m on the subject, sellotape ditto

Thankfully, I haven't encountered any for a little while now, but those seat belts that get tighter and tighter and simply cannot be loosened again without taking the whole belt out of the buckle and starting again, which is monumentally UNsafe to be forced to do. Like a kind of ratchet strap that you use for securing luggage down, so that it can't move - except that people do need to be able to (safely) move whilst in a vehicle.

Of course they're supposed to have the tension on them and take a moment or so to manually adjust, but I'm talking about the ones where, once they've gone to a certain tightness, there's no way whatsoever of slowly pulling more back out. A seat belt is supposed to pin you in to prevent you from moving suddenly (i.e. in a crash or similar) - not to stop you from moving at all.

Modern trains where the seats are too short, too hard and the seat back is an ironing board, and if that's not bad enough, the windows don't align with the seats so you don't even get a view!

I think you have forgotten the complete absence of properly sharp knifes that actually cut anything and reading lamps. No holiday cottage would be complete without this pair on the missing list.

Virtually every holiday cottage we've stayed in had been badly designed. The last one had only a two seat sofa in a home allegedly suitable for 8 people - the other 6 have to sit at the dining table!

Bathroom sinks that are very shallow so if you turn the tap on too much, the water splashes out and soaks you. Top showers without a hose so that you can't wash particular areas of your body and can't even wipe/clean the shower cubicle without soaking yourself.

Upstairs bedrooms in the loft space with badly designed furniture layout so you bang your head constantly, short wardrobe/drawer units where the hanging area is too short you literally can't hang anything.

Every conceivable spatula, mixing/serving spoons and other kitchen implement except what you actually need, i.e. a potato peeler or kitchen scissors. Only one small oven tray when it's a full size oven with 2 shelves.

@sjxoxo Yes, I pull it on over my heads. Then pull the underband down over my boobs. I kind of lean forward to help pull it down. I didn’t think I was small-chested but maybe I am relatively speaking, if I’m able to get this bra on without opening the top clasp 😂or I’m just wearing it wrong

The chairs with the desks attached allow you to flip which side the desk is attached on so they work for lefties too

Bathroom sinks that are very shallow so if you turn the tap on too much, the water splashes out and soaks you.

Ooh, yes. and the square ones - most of which also have a completely flat/level base, so the water just lurks and doesn't drain away properly.

And that reminds me of yet another tap one: the ones where, no matter how big the sink itself is, the taps are still positioned so that you have to repeatedly bash your hands against the back of the sink, rather than extending out far enough so that you can wash your hands in the middle of the sink.

I grew up in one of these houses. One of my last conversations with my lovely dad was to ask him why he had never had the loo and the bathroom knocked together. He said that it was because since there was only one loo in the house, if someone was in the bath then someone else could go to the loo. As for why the sink was in the bathroom he said it was unhygienic to have a sink next to the loo, if you had toothbrushes! I guess in the 1950s nobody wanted to wash their hands after going to the toilet; sadly now the house is mine and they're definitely getting knocked together and I'm putting another toilet in downstairs.

I also put my Shock Absorber bra on like this, and never undo the clasp. My problem is the extension bits of fabric which I have a job unbunching because I once broke an arm and can't move it behind me... have resorted to pencils or rulers...

I don’t mind the self scan machines in supermarkets

in fact I always use them because one thing I cannot stand is when cashiers will lick their fingers to open bags for you. Hopefully that wouldn’t happen now as less people buy bags and covid etc. Still they might chew their nails or whatever and then pick up each of your food items after

no thanks!

But I don't need to see that they're watching me. I know they're watching me. Everyone is watching me

Bus armrests, the ones that can be moved up or down.

Otherwise known as bus spears for creating horrendous muscle contusions and huge haematomas in your thighs and hip as the bus jerks around as you're trying to get close enough to the door to have a chance of getting off when the driver slams the brakes on at the stop.

It took eight months for the one on my left quad to finally stop hurting.

Crutches. So you've buggered up your ankle, and need to be non weightbearing for the next six weeks, eh? Well, how about also buggering up your shoulders, upper back, rotator cuff, pectorals AND the palms of your hands for the next three months? Give it 48 hours (with the use of bubble wrap, old socks and a pair of padded cycling gloves) and I can promise you that the ankle won't bother you in the fucking slightest.

Shoes. Especially 'formal' ones, the type that are expected for 'professional dress standards'. Take a wonder of evolution, a springy, shock absorbing, speed enhancing and sensitive structure like the human foot, specifically selected for to make it possible to travel great distances, climb, balance, run, creep, push, jump and generally survive in a world where a third of it is designed to see you as food, a third is designed for you to make into food whether it likes it or not and a third doesn't give a shit either way because it's inanimate but will kill you - and then encase it in rigid leather or plastic that is too tight to allow it to function, will cause blisters, sore and cuts if it's too big, too small, not quite flexible enough, too flexible or just there, disables the windlass function of the plantar fascia/arch/foot complex, puts pressure on the joints so that they become deformed after years of sideways compression, alters your gait so that excessive strain is translated from toe-foot-ankle-shin-knee-thigh-hip-pelvis-spine-neck, creates muscle imbalances and never, never fits you properly. And that's before you get to the addition of an excessively elevated portion at the back that further fucks up your body and endangers the ankles if a surface is too smooth, too uneven, too sloped, too grippy, too slippery or just fucking there on the basis that it 'looks good' and 'shows toe cleavage'. And once you've been stuck with those bastarding things for the majority of your life, even the ones designed to not actually fuck up your body are unsuitable because your body has been altered so much by the cunting things, you can't wear those without pain, either.

Often find those narrow awkward sinks with taps tightly in the corner are in disabled toilets. In fact disabled toilets in general are often absurdly inadequate and poorly designed.

@Heronatemygoldfish Glad to hear of someone else. I am able to unbunch the extension straps but they are annoying if you’re unable to reach back!

@NeverDropYourMooncup I was given some alternative crutches to try once. You rest your whole lower arm in a rest, with a handle to grip with your hand. It reduces the pressure on the shoulders and distributes the weight more, including engaging your core and back as the crutches are held in a kind of A shape, at a bit of an angle to the body. They were really good and I hope the company manages to break into supplying the NHS. The standard ones are awful, and the American ones held in the armpit seem even worse!

For people with continuously beeping after finishing dishwashers, at least Bosch and Siemens or any other continental brands, they come set up like that by default, however if you dig through the manual or google, there’s a combination of buttons which switches off that function. I’ve done it on two of my dishwashers and my friends’ dishwashers (who were also driven mad by them, living in a flat and being able to hear the beeps through the night)

btw recently I couldn’t understand why my Sonicare toothbrush was continuously flashing yellow after use, and turned out it was a demand to replace the head. I had to go all through the instructions but I did find the combination of long and short presses which disabled that option

@TwoMonthsOff I think @AgnestaVipers meant the one with a FIXED (not hinged) blade which is absolutely rubbish, I think someone upthread said they used one like that all their life and thought it was fine. If you only ever tried the fixed blade which doesn’t cling to the surface of the vegetable you haven’t lived.

I have the oxo good grips one and it’s a good one but the blade is of course hinged.

That's the point. One is gross, one is a dream.

Bottle caps that you have to squeeze at the same time as turning them. See bleach, house and garden chemicals and any sort of pharmaceutical, even the ones which are supposed to medicate people with arthritis, who have trouble…..gripping and grasping .

I have to decant virtually everything like this into alternative containers (labelled) or waste hours of my life and my ever decreasing supply of patience.

Luckily they haven’t put them on gin bottles yet.

Can’t you just turn the notebook 180 degrees so the ring binders things are on the other side?

Oh, and large containers of fairly liquid substances such as yogurt, which you want to keep in the fridge for more than one use.They used to come with reusable lids, now they often have a sort of single use wrapper, which if you can manage to get it off in one go without resorting to the knife or scissors is then just another bit of wasted plastic or foil. Another job for the decanter in chief (that would be me) because you can’t leave a lidless carton in the fridge to fall over / attract bits of random detritus/ get a skin from exposure to the atmosphere.

I watched a manicurist tip the bottle to almost horizontal with the brush to get the rest out. You'd need to have it on a table though