Weekly Gripe

It's been a while since I did the weekly gripe, mostly because I've been feeling pretty dang positive lately. But today I have something to gripe about: "recloseable" packaging.

Really, I don't know why they bother trying to make what is essentially a plastic bag or cardboard box "recloseable". On the plastic bags, they put this little dotted line that says "cut or tear here", but if you cut there (it's impossible to tear), the damn thing's still closed because they put the dotted line up into the heat seal. So you cut a little lower, but it's still not low enough. If you ever do cut low enough, you've just cut off the ziploc mechanism. If you decide not to risk cutting too low and you try to separate the heat seal by pulling instead, you somehow end up disconnecting the inner portion of the ziploc. Then you can zip it closed all you want, but there's still a big gaping hole running parallel to the zipper.

And the cardboard boxes? The little tab-into-slot thing is clever enough, but they've forgotten two very important things. One, they have made the box out of very flimsy cardboard, and once that tab bends, the box will never close again. Two, they glued the crap out of the very flimsy cardboard box, so that when you pry it open, it rips apart the slot, and then the tab (assuming it didn't get bent in the first place) won't stay in any more.

My advice: don't even bother trying to reclose those "recloseable" bags and boxes. Instead close them up the good old American way: with epoxy and/or duct tape.