Perturbed by prolific packaging
Remember compact discs? I have dozens of them around the house, all of them just loitering in boxes for lack of any gadgets on which to even play them anymore.
When I see them I don’t see wasted music. I see frustration. Every one of those discs required lock-pick precision and butcher-grade tools to get them open. The plastic cases were called jewel cases, and they came wrapped in cellophane so sleekly smooth and tightly wrapped that if you planned to listen to the music at dinner, you better get to work opening it before lunch.
You are in your bedroom and decide to open the case, but all the sharp implements are in the kitchen and so you attack with your teeth, obviously. But those are some tight and tiny seams in the ends of the case and unless your front teeth are both buck and pointy, you will fail. So out to the kitchen you go for the scissors, which are too thick to puncture the seams. Finally, you wield a knife and, having lost patience, attack the cellophane at the front of the case, cutting a gouge into the plastic case beneath. But you’re still not there. You still must breach the little silver tab that holds the cover shut.
I bring this up because I’ve noticed that packaging has gotten even worse since the days of maddening CD cases. Even as prices have soared and quality has declined, the packaging has grown more ironclad and challenging.
I’m not talking about those molded, clear plastic, evil, bubbled packages that house things like batteries and toys. Everyone knows that for those, you have to keep your chainsaw gassed up at all times. Those have been terrible all along.
I’m referring to the things that arrive in home delivery, like the cardboard boxes that Amazon and other vendors use. My new sneakers arrived in a box that was bound up with so much plastic tape that when I finally hacked through the last of it, the box was skinnier all around. It left me feeling like I’d plucked and deboned a turkey.
Produce at the grocery store comes housed in plastic clamshell boxes held together by little round snap tabs at the corners. Good luck trying to sneak a few grapes for a midnight snack; those snaps release with quite a bang.
Having misplaced the last of my guitar picks, I ordered another batch. You’d expect such benign little gems to arrive in a plastic baggie, or maybe a little drawstring pouch, but no. The box was plastic, of course, and wrapped in yards of brown paper and then stuffed into a cardboard box large enough to hold a puppy. The poor thing would have lost oxygen by the time I cut through all the tape.
Of course, there’s waste involved here. I gave up on the Hello Fresh meal kits, not because I didn’t like the food, but because there was so much cardboard and plastic waste. I needed a box cutter for those shipments, too.
Maybe all this extra wrapping is meant to secure items during delivery, but if protection is the goal, then why was a sweatshirt not wrapped in a plastic bag to protect it when the box was rained on? Of course, there’s something satisfying about taping up a box with one of those big rolls that just slide across the cardboard. Maybe the shipping workers get carried away.
Or maybe the tougher packaging is just like so many other things about life. Everything seems to be more difficult and take longer these days. And wound a bit too tight.