Inanimate objects which are pricks

Any kind of weirdo screw head. You’re stopping anyone from undoing it, you’re just making us buy another stupid screwdriver bit.

I have a Siemens oven, it has a Shabat setting. I think that its taking the piss ever so slightly, but I can’t honestly be sure..?

I have a kettle, one of those really cheap Tesco jobbies, it’s lid is operated by a button realise from the handle. The button is pointless now after years of operation, it never ever opens the lid when you want to fill it from the tap, so you end up filling it from the spout…yadda yadda, about half way through boiling any amount of water, the lid will pop up, and the kettle, of course, won’t actually at that point boil. So now I have to stand guard until it does the lid thing, push it down, then I can go about my day.

Prick.

Hand dryers.

Everything and anything in a public convenience that can only be operated by waving your hand in front of it like a Jedi and leaves you wondering whether it just doesn’t work or just wants to watch you do jazz hands again.

Did find myself waving my hands fruitlessly about under a featureless, buttonless hand drier for a few moments – before realising it was actually an old school paper towel dispenser 🙂 So they are pricks too just for looking a bit like a hand drier. As are the many and various ways of providing toilet paper but making it difficult to actually obtain.

So my idea for a toaster with a photo electric cell wasn’t such a bad idea.
You simply press the colour of toast vrequired from the pictogram on the side and voilà. The moisture content of the bread is made irrelevant as the magic eye dictates the time frame. So fresh or stale bread can be toasted to the same level

CD writers weren’t SCSI’s fault though

The first one I had was SCSI. It cost a fortune, so did the disks back then. I think I replaced it with a USB 2 drive which probably cost about 1/5 the price and worked 90% of the time compared with about 50% for the SCSI drive. Also, you could just plug it in and it worked instead of having to set device addresses using jumper switches.

The ‘security’ door for the hallway of my block of flats.

Going through it once? Never fully closes so you have to pull it closed.
Doing multiple trips in and out? Clicks shut EVERY. DAMN. TIME.

Everything and anything in a public convenience that can only be operated by waving your hand in front of it like a Jedi and leaves you wondering whether it just doesn’t work or just wants to watch you do jazz hands again.

At my old workplace the loo had sensors for the lights, one by the sink and urinal and one in the trap. The trap one only ever worked once in a 10 minute period so you would always be left in pitch darkness after a minute when it switched off.

I must be the lucky one as my printer, toaster and kettle behave perfectly and have done for years. Both my washing machine and air fryer make a simple sound when finished too, the washer beeps eight times and the air fryer just dings once!

WiFi routers. See Welsh farmer’s thread.

Truly made from spiderwebs and magic.

Vending machines, work faultlessly for hundreds of customers then all of a sudden jam for you. Either nobody around to fix it or by the time you get someone there, your product has fallen and been nicked.

My microwave, it bleeps five times to let you know it’s finished. FIVE times to let you know something that you started 90 seconds ago is ready. I hate it so much.
I then bought a fancy Bosch kettle that has temperature settings, it bleeps not just when it’s ready, it bleeps to let you know you’ve pushed a button. A button that you’ve actually pushed with your own finger.

The Dyson combined tap and hand dryer on the last public toilet I was in. Stupid y-shaped thing, no controls visible, no idea what came out of where, terrible design. Waved my hand under it for water and got warm air first. Slow clap (with unwashed hands)

The Dyson air blade dryers don’t get sworn at but probably deserve a mention for the primordial soup they produce and have no way to deal with. There’s one at work with a line of green stuff along the lower seam below the air vents, it’s certainly living matter and growing nicely in the warm environment.

Charging Leads. Why so many different sizes to charge phones/lights/watches. I’ve got a drawer full of different sodding leads.

For the lost mobile phone issue.. Garmin watches have “find my phone” on them and the tile app lets you hook inexpensive Bluetooth finders on all the stuff you use regularly (keys wallet etc) so they’re piss easy to find. Genuinely improved my life

CD writers weren’t SCSI’s fault though

The first one I had was SCSI. It cost a fortune, so did the disks back then.

I remember Philips LMSI, Panasonic, Matsushita (which was the Panasonic standard with the connector the other way around, how we laughed) and finally IDE. But I don’t recall ever seeing a SCSI optical drive. Maybe really early on when discs came in cartridges and WORM discs were a thing?

combined tap and hand dryer on the last public toilet I was in

Truly hateful design, soap water and air dispensed at seemingly arbitrary intervals.

So they are pricks too just for looking a bit like a hand drier. As are the many and various ways of providing toilet paper but making it difficult to actually obtain.

I love those transparent bog roll holders where the loose end dangles through a trap door affair at the bottom. Try to pull it to rotate the roll and obtain sufficient paper for the task in hand  and a combination of too much friction and cheap paper with the tensile strength of fresh air, leaves you with just a single square of paper.  So now you have to skin your knuckles trying to squeeze your hand through the trapdoor to grab the flappy end of the bastard paper which is invariably 180 degrees opposite the optimum point.

So you resort to rotating the roll, 3mm at a time with the tips of your now bleeding fingers, until said flappy end deigns to reappear, 15 minutes later. You pull it really gently, but it snaps again leaving you with another single square whilst you swear hysterically and **** the bastard contraption repeatedly. Leading to the startled old gentleman in the next cubicle calling security who escort you off the premises whilst still suffering sub-optimal cleft cleanliness.

Just me?

So now you have to skin your knuckles trying to squeeze your hand through the trapdoor to grab the flappy end of the bastard paper which is invariably 180 degrees opposite the optimum point.

Think of it as training to be a vet.

Alarm clocks.
Too bright.
To jarring and loud.
No easy way to silence.
Arseholes.

My toaster is actualy brilliant.

Number 3 on the dial for bread, 4 for crumpets.

My microwave, on the other hand, whilst perfectly good, has the need to announce that it’s finished its task to the entire street via a series of unessesarily long and loud beeps. … It sounds like there’s one of those massive caterpillar quarry trucks reversing in my kitchen… Why?

Just me?

I blame students. McD’s kept most of Preston Uni in bogroll for the couple of years I was there.

Think of it as training to be a vet.

Think of it as training for your sex life.

Door handles. They’re everywhere, and they’re usually so helpful but they’re always watching… waiting… For the perfect moment to strike, and hook themselves onto a loose bit of clothes or a pocket or a bag handle and snag you. They never do it when you’re in a good mood, or even when it’d be funny, it only ever happens when you’re absolutely at breaking point and they know that one little inconvenience will drive you over the edge- and that the smaller the inconvenience that makes you snap, the worse it’ll feel. And of course you can get free easily, but you won’t, you’ll lose your temper and yank at it or get half free and then get snagged again and you’ll drop whatever you were carrying and sometimes, just occasionally, when they know you’re at your lowest ebb they’ll make the door slam into your face.

Bastards.

Oh, and my smart tv, despite having a quad core processor, isn’t smart enough to automatically switch to an active input in the absence of any other active inputs.

The big heaters above doors in shops. What’s the point? The doors are ajar most of the time and if they are closed you’d melt under one in 10seconds

Door handles. They’re everywhere, and they’re usually so helpful but they’re always watching… waiting… For the perfect moment to strike, and hook themselves onto a loose bit of clothes or a pocket or a bag handle and snag you.

+1. A couple of years ago, finally did for my Aiwa headphones that I’d had since college. Bastard thing.

Upright vacuum cleaners. If ever you use the hose attachment they just go all pathetic and fall over! The number of times I’ve beaten one half to death with it’s own hose for just being a falling down pathetic prick I can’t tell you.
At least the wired one can suck the dust out of a carpet though. The battery powered Vax thing just switches itself off as soon as it touches anything slightly long piled. Useless arse. JUST SUCK UP THE DUST!

Phone chargers with LEDs that are brighter than the sun.

The big heaters above doors in shops. What’s the point? The doors are ajar most of the time and if they are closed you’d melt under one in 10seconds

At the risk of thread drift into at least three others,

Automatic revolving doors. Just like regular doors only it takes you three days to get through them and they slam to a halt if anyone touches them which everyone does because a) they’re slow as molasses and b) they’re doors with big handles, what do you expect people to do?

Pricks looking to solve a problem which doesn’t exist. We’ve got on just fine with doors since we moved out of the caves.

The number of times I’ve beaten one half to death with it’s own hose for just being a falling down pathetic prick I can’t tell you.

The video is far too accurate to be funny!

The big heaters above doors in shops. What’s the point?

They’re called door air curtain heaters, they minimize the cold air outside mixing with the warm air inside. If sized and installed correctly then they do work. They are not designed to heat the room they’re in.

Automatic revolving doors.

These are really annoying but not quite as annoying as a manual revolving door, those things weighed a ton to turn and could be sped up to a dangerous speed for other users (we were bad kids). They do serve a similar purpose to the over door curtain heaters by keeping the warm air in.

The one’s I was thinking of have already been mentioned above, except maybe wine glasses. They’re a stupidly fragile and not very stable, yet they are meant to hold a liquid that will very definitely stain your carpet and sofa.

Anything with Apple written on it. I don’t know why, they give me the rage every time.

Our new microwave. Nearly caused divorce and still might. You have to press a button called microwave just to wake it up. You then have to dial in the time in 30 second blocks . And it beeps 5 times to say done, then an0ther 30 seconds later just in case and,  in another 30 seconds  the last. Why does it need 11 power settings? It’s a sodding microwave. It only need Nuke and stop.

Any kind of weirdo screw head. You’re stopping anyone from undoing it, you’re just making us buy another stupid screwdriver bit.

On that note, Phillips or Pozi screw heads. They’re pants. Torx or Assy for me.

Flat heads get a pass as they can look nice if set correctly.

Have a hate/hate relationship with vacuum cleaners. I’m convinced they are just trying to piss me off or injure me, normally by waiting until I’m not looking then sliding off the wall where they’ve been propped and landing on my foot. For some reason my wife thinks calling a hoover a bastard is slightly unhinged.

EDIT: I see I have a kindred spirit in @desperatebicycle

I then bought a fancy Bosch kettle that has temperature settings, it bleeps not just when it’s ready, it bleeps to let you know you’ve pushed a button. A button that you’ve actually pushed with your own finger.

Very useful if you are blind

thols2

Are you suggesting that the British plug is bad design? No, no, no:

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=my+british+plug+is+best&mid=E50B396C5238386954A8E50B396C5238386954A8&FORM=VIRE

Micro usb though! That is so bad that I do not believe it can have been done unintentionally. Someone, somewhere is still laughing about the pain and frustration they have caused for millions.

I have to go with printers too. Honourable mention for modern TVs – I’ve accepted that I’ve zero chance of setting one up correctly but that’s more to do with me than the TV. Also Lezyne bicycle pumps, which I think unscrew the valve core for everybody.

Also Lezyne bicycle pumps, which I think unscrew the valve core for everybody.

Reminds me.  Presta valve stems which are made of cheese and bend just by looking at them.

Power tools. Invariably pack up when I’m absolutely filthy and half way through a job it would have been really nice to do in one go. So far on the extension the big angle grinder when cutting bricks (repairable), power drill (tried replacing the bushes but it still sparked so it was the winding that had shorted, dead), the other power drill (replaced cable), the small angle grinder ( switch jammed with dust, just needed a thorough clean), the workshop vacuum cleaner (an electrical domino to replace the switch), the big vacuum cleaner (motor bearing dead – I’ll forgive that one, it was an Aquavac that we’d used and abused for 29 years).

Nah, Lezyne hand pumps are great.

I have Nam level flashbacks thinking of SCSI! Had cd writer that needed the pc to have 2 SCSI cards one attached to the data serving hard drive and the other to the writer. Was a nightmare to keep working

This is becoming one of my favourite threads.

https://tenor.com/bbKbr.gif