I Miss Good Stuff...

It seems that in my life certain things are destined to be repeated.  It’s a little like the movie “Ground Hog Day,” where Bill Murray’s character is forced to relive the day over until he changes his attitude.  It’s a fun movie and a good metaphor.  In my life however, it’s not a state of mind that needs changing, it’s the physical world.

More often than not, when I purchase something and take it home, excited to open and play with whatever I just bought, I find that the item is either defective or broken.  This situation, in my own experience, has been taken to the extreme.  It doesn’t matter at all if the particular item is an expensive sound system component, an automotive part or a cheap Wal-Mart impulse buy.  I buy it, go home, open it….and its crap. Broken, useless, disappointing, not-functioning crap.

The phenomenon does not appear to be restricted to the item’s country of origin.   I’ve come to learn that an overpaid over-educated American can assemble something just as ‘bass-ackwards’ and cock-handed as the youngest sweat shop employee.  I think some people go about their daily assembly and testing jobs like they screw…with their minds on something else entirely.

I have even tried something I don’t really want to admit.  It implies a level of superstition on my part, but I honestly didn’t approach it that way.  I have…..when standing in front of a store shelf loaded with boxes of my targeted purchase….actually taken a box that sits two or three items back on the shelf.  I’ve done it more times than I can count.  I even peer over my own shoulder like I’m stealing it, afraid someone will see my obvious insecurity.  As I said, I'm not superstitious in the tiniest way.  It is more of an attempt to ‘beat the odds’ by trying to eliminate the nearly unavoidable trip to back to the store, the long, mind numbing wait at the return desk with all the criminals trying to return silly crap they spent their cash on when food was a priority…and without their “my dog ate it…the washing machine ate it…I thought I had it” receipt.  By the way…why do all the three toed slowpokes who work behind the return desk look the same?  Is it just me?  Has anyone else notice this?

Anyhow, this practice of not buying the “first on the shelf” item has had some success.  I don’t want to conceed that I may in some small part feel that the first item is somehow tarnished in some way in that every other bell end has had his fingers in the box already messin’ with the gear inside, but maybe I do.  This does in fact raise my next question:  If you go to a store, find the item you want, notice that the box has been opened, is crumpled, damaged or otherwise tampered with, and you buy it anyway…..then you are playing Russian Roulette with your time and money.  Only a Bonander of the first order would take that purchase home.  You might as well go out to the parking lot, get in your car, drive to another parking stall nearby and take that busted piece of garbage back inside the store.  Enjoy your long, smelly wait at Mouth Breather Central with all the other returnees.

Thankfully online purchases have not been nearly as much of a problem.  Of course I realize the item is no different in any way to the one I might find in a store, but somehow, inexplicably, Amazon and eBay seem to have a line on sending things that actually work when you take them out of the box.  Of course there have been exceptions….but not remotely as many. 
My own theory, and it’s just a theory, is that we are the victims of very poor quality much more than we could realize.  Even the “I don’t care” attitude of many behind-the-counter front line employees leaves us frazzled and sad.  Today’s products are often, though not always, slowly thought out and quickly made.  They are really “designed” to fail within a short life span.  In contrast, a stark example of this is my grandfather’s tools.  In my tool box are some wrenches that belonged to my grandfather, Jack.  Nearly a century old, they are straight, clean-edged, beautifully crafted and true.  By comparison, my expensive set of wrenches are chipped, strained, widened out and in some cases, bent.  I bet Grandpa didn’t have to go back to the store to replace a new item.  I bet, just out of shear embarrassment, the store would have come to him.  I miss Grandpa and I miss good stuff.  I hate that in order to buy something of quality and long life, you must mortgage an extremity, sacrifice the family cat and backyard boogie a rain dance in your knickers on a full moon.  Don’t pretend you haven’t…I’m not the only one….am I?