Archive for March, 2006

This shampoo (Natures Organics “fruits”) works well enough. It:

• cleans my hair
• doesn’t cost too much
• has an Apple flavour that’s not too objectionable

It is also an example of what must be the pinnacle of consumerism – a container that won’t dispense a small quantity. I don’t have as much hair as some people, and I don’t need to use a lot of shampoo. A drop or two is enough.

The people who produce this product have found a way to thwart people like me who don’t use enough shampoo. They put a large hole in the top of the bottle, but give the shampoo itself a jelly-like consistency.

If you just squeeze the bottle a little bit, as soon as you release your squeeze the bottle just sucks the blob of shampoo straight back into the bottle!

Instead, you must squeeze enough to dispense a big blob of shampoo – big enough that its weight will overcome the force trying to suck it back into the bottle.

Clever people, those who work in consumer product design.

A strange kind of reminiscence this one, back to the days when the local supermarket (in Sydney) stocked a brand of toilet paper called Thousand Sheet Roll.

I was living by myself at the time. I would install one of these, and wouldn’t have to worry about changing the roll for months and months at a time. The roll started to seem like a fixture rather than a consumable. It was only single-ply paper, but it was decently strong and perfectly functional.

Even the ordinary rolls of the time (early 1980’s) held 500 sheets.

But then the manufacturers realised that most people instinctively buy toilet paper “by the roll”, not “by the sheet”. So they reduced the rolls to 400 sheets at first, then to as low as 180 sheets (although 220 seems to be pretty common nowadays).

The manufacturers ran ads claiming that their paper was softer than ever. Always, the ad showed someone squeezing the roll. Well that doesn’t illustrate anything except how loosely the roll has been wound. If you wind the roll with lots of air, the roll as a whole appears more squeezable even though the paper is the same.

The manufacturers aren’t stupid. Why put 500 sheets on a roll if people are just as happy to buy rolls of 220 sheets (and to buy more than twice as many of those rolls)?

So now, the multi-pack rules. Four, six, eight, twelve rolls at once, with all the extra shelf space costs, transport costs and extra cardboard cores that this implies.

Oh for the old days when life was simple, and Thousand Sheet Roll ruled the little room.

The kids were keen to go ten-pin bowling so we phoned Morecambe super-bowl and reserved a lane for an hour for £20 including shoe hire.

It was a mixed experience.

The lighting above the pins wasn’t working on our lane, but we bowled on. It soon became clear that the automatic scoring wasn’t working properly either, as it was frequently recording more pins downed than had actually been hit.

At one point, the scoring system decided that Mrs Penditure had bowled two balls when she had only bowled one, and we decided we’d had enough. We brought this to the attention of an “operative”. She said that all she could do was to reset our game, but if the problem persisted we could move to another lane.

The light above the pins was now working, and the scoring seemed to work OK for a while, but then it started to go haywire again. We complained again, but the person we had originally spoken to was no longer available.

The lady who attended our lane said that all she could do was to change the score for us – and indeed it turned out that we could edit the score from our own console. But the scoring errors continued, and it was impractical to edit the score every time, so we just bowled on.

It was still good fun, but the time we spent sorting out the problems took a big chunk out of our playing time, and we were only able to complete one game within our hour. On checking the website after getting home, I saw that we could have paid “by the game” for £14.80, saving more than a quarter.

Now I suppose I could write a letter of complaint and chase it up. But wouldn’t it be better if the staff were sufficiently empowered and motivated that they could just do whatever is needed to make sure that the customers have a good time out?

I’ve been ten-pin bowling elsewhere before, and the equipment worked perfectly every time. I hope this was just a one-off.