What modern invention is meant to be helpful but is the opposite?

[HippyDays]

Snooze button…

I’m so used to it now I sleep through for ages hitting snooze. So today when I really had to get up early I didn’t. And missed my train.

I am blaming the invention of snooze rather than admit my own imperfection 😁

That's both extremely funny and potentially scary (as well as highly irritating, from the sounds of it).

I can imagine how that would work if they combined it with a black box and ended up charging you a million quid for your car insurance, as it believed you were constantly driving whilst exhausted - when you were just having the time of your life with a super eighties bangerathon. I'd also be paranoid that it might report me to the police and send them the footage of me belting it out with Bonnie!

My car has an actual bag hook on the passenger side next to the glove box.

Email.

All machines these days are constantly nagging and quite needy.
Washing machine 'IM FINISHED EMPTY ME''
Dishwasher 'IM FINISHED EMPTY ME'
Car 'FUCKING CHARGE ME IMMEDIATELY'
Fridge 'SHUT THE FUCKING DOOR'
Robovac 'IM STUCK UNDER YOUR BED... IM HUMPING YOUR SLIPPERS... IVE EATEN ALL YOUR CHARGERS... ATTEND TO ME!!'
Fuck off!

Hard agree with this! I would make em illegal if I could.

Wow, what new wizardry will they think of next?! I wonder why more cars don't?

On my old Volvo, there was a little plastic clip attached to the edge of the windscreen for car park tickets, so they don't blow on to the floor when you close the door. It must have cost pennies but such a great, useful idea. I always wondered why all cars didn't have this.

I'm probably being stupid here, but are leaf blowers actually misnamed and are really leaf vacuums to actually collect the leaves for easy disposal?

Or is the idea to just blow them away from your own property and make them some random other person's problem?

Is it just like me yeeting my black bin bags over my neighbour's fence and then considering them properly disposed of, as it's no longer my problem?!

No, they allow you to blow scattered leaves into a corner so you can more easily collect and dispose of them/compost.

We had a fridge more than 20 years ago which beeped if we inadvertently left the door open. Which was reasonably helpful but a complete pain when cleaning the fridge.
We also found it really annoying that it didn't have the same function for leaving the freezer door open!
Fridge freezer - I will nag you every 20 seconds if you dare leave the fridge door open....but you can leave the freezer door open all week and let your food defrost and I won't say a word!!

Ah, thanks. That makes sense if you blown them all into a pile in a contained area; but most people I see using them just blow them down the street.

I totally agree with you - I have a habit of picking my alarm clock up after I've pressed the snooze button and then putting it by my side with my hand on the button as I fall back to sleep and I keep on pressing it - luckily I have a Border Collie who seems to know the time who comes and bashes me awake with her paw if I press snooze too many times - she's a right harsh taskmaster 😁

@Exhausteddog same. The freezer doesn't give a shit.

We have a Bosch that does this too - several of the popular brands are German.

Intensely irritating as it is to us Brits, I think this might be designed like this because many German families have a basement/cellar which is where they do their laundry.

Therefore if you're in the main bit of the house, you may not hear the 'finished' beep unless you specifically concentrate and listen for it - thus you might well want frequent and prolonged beeping, so you'll never wait too long for the next beep when listening out for it.

If you search on YouTube for the brand, model number and 'stop beeping', there are often kind people with the niche knowledge who will give you the specific sequence of buttons to press to change the settings and stop the beeping altogether.

Bluetooth earbuds. Two tiny controls look that look EXACTLY the same. the size of a pin head. On one side, one turns off, one for volume up.
Other side. Turns on or down. Can never get it right.

Silent SCREAMING from me. 😱

Or they won't pair. Take them out of charger. Press a button (which sodding one?) lights flash on or off. Etc

Two much bloody faff. Then they fall out of your ears.

£80 - gift by the way, for running.
ABSOLUTELY USELESS.

Check your own shopping out tills at the supermarket 🙄🙄🙄

Printers.

Yes! They sit there all cumbersome and then act completely shocked when you actually want them to print something!

Oh God, yes. I can print on average three pages on BEST before the print heads need yet another deep clean. And BEST is the only mode that gives me a decent looking document.

My last printer was constantly whining for more paper, so I could never leave and go and do something else, always had to be on hand to open and close the paper tray every minute.

Smartphones. It was great we could be in touch with the office 24/7 from anywhere in the world. Until it wasn’t.

I agree so, so much. Men love it. The noise pollution is horrible. I dream of lost days of clippers for hedges, rakes for leaves, push-pull mowers for lawns.. Now it's all ear-splitting power tools

Phones taking away the slot for plug-in earphones. No one bothers now

@Printedword
Agreed, our DS has found several kitchen equipment things really useful. Although we are still looking for the perfect jar opener. Flatmate or the method my Dad taught me seem to work better than gadgets. Dad's method - teaspoon under the lip to release seal - doesn't work with all jars and still requires quite a steady hand.

The one from Must Have Ideas is brilliant

Yes and when you can see a full toilet roll inside, taunting you, but can't access it

And the way that there is a specific way to load the paper, with a stupid moving diagram that tells you, you are doing it wrong ....and yet the 24th consecutive time you put it in exactly the same way as the previous 23 times, it finally accepts that you've done it correctly! FML.

All the while making juttery noises like it's about to do something useful but isnt

This.

Yep