They didn't consult me. Obviously.

There's this frequent conversation that I have with a male friend. Generally, when it happens, we are both in the car on the way to a store. Here is the scenario: somehow a product comes up, and he has to criticize how it was made, and say that it has a flaw, and if he would have designed it, it would not have that flaw. So I say, "They didn't consult you." And he says, "OBviously!" We have this conversation over and over, and most of the time, it is justified. You have to wonder what the manufacturers are thinking when they invent things, things that don't necessarily work out well for the consumers.

Then, the other day I had my own "They didn't consult you" experience. I was at work caring for an older person who needed help getting their shredder free of all the jammed paper. It took an HOUR to unjam the shredder. You kinda have to wonder: hasn't the company ever heard of market surveys? survey software could easily have asked people what they valued in a shredder. One thing I would have said, IF they CONSULTED me, was: if I put in more than 8 sheets, or for some other reason it jams, for heaven's sake, I don't deserve to spend an HOUR jamming a tiny screwdriver into it. What I would rather do is be able to flip a lever which would undo the blades from each other, and the paper jams would magically disappear. And even, there could be a special thing in place that you would run to declog it. They didn't consult me. Obviously.