A couple of years ago I did a blog about some of my pet peeves about people’s grammatical errors, especially usage of the first person pronoun and its versus it’s. Those still drive me crazy, and don’t even get me started on past participles! One of these days I need to do a whole blog just on the proper usage of past participles, another major source of irritation! Today, however, I’m going to hit on some of my favorite complaints with manufacturers and their devious tactics.
I recently bought two bottles of shampoo and conditioner in the same brand I’ve bought for a couple of years now. At first glance the bottles looked about the same but just a little bit different. As I looked more closely at the bottles, the older bottles held 25.4 fluid ounces each, and the new one held only 21 ounces. The price? You guessed it! The price was the exact same but with a 17% decrease in the quantity. How often do we see this type of thing at the grocery store or the drugstore? The price remains the same, but the measure goes down. I really noticed this tactic a couple of years ago when I was making homemade cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving. The size of the package of cranberries had gone down, which I didn’t notice at first, so the sauce came out a bit more watery and a little too sweet when I used my old recipe. Sneaky!
One of my personal sources of irritation is the discrepancy between pillow sizes and the pillow cases you are trying to squeeze them into. Have you ever bought a nice big and fluffy new pillow and then tried to fit it into the pillow case? It comes out looking like a sausage stuffed to the brim! I actually discovered several old pillowcase in the back of the linen closet the other day. They were a good 4 inches wider than the newer ones I had purchased more recently! I’m sure saving that little itsy bit of extra fabric was critical to the bottom line of that company.
While I am on the topic of linens, have you bought a new king-sized blanket lately? King-sized beds are approximately square, but the blankets are always long skinny rectangles. If you want to tuck in the blanket at the foot of the bed, you barely have enough blanket left on the sides to cover your shoulders. If you would like to have enough blanket on the sides to cover your shoulders during the night, there is not enough left to tuck in at the foot of the bed. By morning your poor little feet are freezing, and the blanket is slowly creeping up to the head of the bed trying to suffocate you!.
My all-time favorite peeve these days, however, is the loss of decent pockets in jeans and women’s slacks! Remember when we actually had pockets that could hold your car keys and your cell phone? Now the pockets are about 2 inches deep. They can barely hold a tissue to blow your nose, let along an iPhone! Yes, I know I could put my phone in the back pocket of my jeans, but I find that uncomfortable. Plus knowing me, I would probably plop down on the sofa, forgetting the phone in the pocket. Crunch! There goes another cracked screen!
Closely related to manufacturers in irritation-causing impact are all those awful TV ads. Once some company comes up with an original approach to advertising, everyone else tries to copy it! How often do you sit and watch a TV commercial and then turn to person next to you and ask, “What were they advertising?” And I hate those stupid commercials with the invisible hand drawing the information with a black and white line drawing! The first one or two of these were clever, but not all of the “me too” versions of them.
Now as you already know, I have two large and very vocal dogs. All commercials with the sounds of someone’s knocking on a door, doorbells or phones ringing, police sirens, or—better yet—barking dogs should definitely be outlawed! Have you ever tried to convince two dogs that everything is OK; there is no one at the front door. It was just the television. Try telling that to a blind dog with hyper-acute hearing, “But, Mom, I heard it. I know someone is out there! Why aren’t you going to the door? Want me to scare them away for you?”
©The Eclectic Grandma
