Nominations for the worst bit of design ever.

GU10 light fitting.

Hateful.

The isis bottom bracket

26″ wheels or is 29″, I forget.

Heathrow?!

White-goods that beep until you attend to them.

Alfa Romeo 156/147 suspension wishbones. Upper and Lower :-/

Alfa Romeo 156/147 suspension wishbones. Upper and Lower :-/

Feel your pain. Powerflex bushes can last a bit longer than standards.

At least they’re a fairly easy job though – just wait until you’ve got to do the ARB bushes, they’re a bitch.

Eggbeater pedals. They need to bloody well work!

Smoke detectors you need three arms to get off the ceiling. “Insert a screwdriver into the slot while sliding the case off.” OK, but i’m on top of a chair on a table and i’d like to steady myself on the wall please.

The Philippe Stark plastic sofa ,i have to sit on one in my dentists waiting room as if being there wasn’t pain enough.

I’m sure it rides like angels carrying you across the trails but that is one goddam ugly bike.
Yes, I have seen some in the flesh and they are even worse than the photos.

F connectors on co-ax cable. Shit. Just shit.
Annoyingly over complicated and fiddly. Very prone to short out.

Paving Slab lifter

The whole GU10 light, TBH. WHen they break, they either take out the lighting circuit trip or explode into a thousand sharp pieces. Sometimes both…

Lumie alarm clock things. And Slough.

The kettle in our works canteen. It dribbles water all over the work surface when you make a brew. How the hell did they screw up the design of a kettle.?

The Alfa Guilia coupe and saloon rear suspension bump stop. A rubber section bonded (allegedly) to a steel base, then they use a spacer in raw aluminium with no barrier of any kind. When the rubber falls off, the steel bolts have had galvanitic corrosion with the aluminium spacer, which means that it takes forever with a hacksaw to cut through as there isn’t really space to get an angle grinder in.

Or, on the same vehicle, putting the brake master cylinder in a very poorly sealed box under the footwell floor, right in the firing line of any spray etc. From the offside front wheel. This means that within a very short space of time the master cylinder gets crap in it and fails. Then, because the brake system has two remote servos, both quite a lot higher than the master cylinder, you have to use a pressure bleed system to get a firm pedal, and even then it is a right pain.

I loved the three GT juniors I had, right up till the time they had brake failure.

Low battery warnings

So your battery is getting critically low. What can we do? I know, let’s make it beep really often, flash too and I know, maybe vibrate also!
What a great idea!

👿

The mild steel metal coolant pipe attached to my T4 engine.
The coolant is no longer in the pipes as its rusted through.
£70 replacement for a steel pipe too. Why would you use a metal that corrodes so easily.

I am not looking forward to this day that is coming already because of:

The plastic ties and shrink wrap that nearly makes it impossible to remove a young child’s toy from its packaging!

Shoulder joint.

Shoulder joint.

I’d go with the human back. Massively shit design for a high stress area.

Any appliance (hifi, video, DVD player etc) that uses a separate physical thing to hold the media that also has an eject button on the remote control. You have to go to the front of the machine anyway to change the cd/tape/video/DVD, so what’s the point of the unnecessary eject button on the remote?

Any bulb on a modern car. Replacing them requires a contortionist midget with arms longer than a giraffe’s neck.

Weetabix packaging. I have never, ever, managed to successfully peel the packaging apart as I am assuming, it is designed to do. Not once. Not even the new paper version.

Weetabix packaging. I have never, ever, managed to successfully peel the packaging apart as I am assuming, it is designed to do. Not once. Not even the new paper version.

Scissors on the little foldy over bits, then cut round. It’s the only f-ing way.

Any bulb on a modern car. Replacing them requires a contortionist midget with arms longer than a giraffe’s neck.

Reminds me of this:

Those stupid threaded post bits that secure toilet seats and lids onto the pan. Surely there must be a better way by now……

The Voice Recorders we use at work where you can eject the DVD using the remote interrogation software when you are miles from site BUT the tray then grinds itself into the cabinet door that houses the voice recorder, class.

A very critical piece of electronic equipment that routes data from multiple sources to other pieces of kit across a large chunk of the country which has two PSU’s to power it, one main, the other standby. Should you replace a duff supply with another of a different mark then there is a large unplanned thermal event on the chassis backplane killing the entire kit. The manufacturer only revealed that different version PSU’s shouldn’t be used together after the fact.

The brand new PSU’s that power our new radio system HMI’s. Should the power fail to the PSU and then be reapplied, because the components are so cheap and have effectively cooked themselves, the loss of power and reapplication causes them to fail, leading to the loss of the HMI and a safety critical failure. At a site where there was a power outage we lost 8 out of 9 HMI’s for most of a day whilst spares were couriered to site.

The AE35 antenna control unit.

Stainless tea pots in cafes – obviously designed to spill the tea everywhere, because that is what they always do!

Chiller cabinets without doors. Honestly, even before the green agenda really got going you’d have shops spending money on leccy to run the chillers whilst cranking the heating up so the staff didn’t walk out. Barmy.

PT Cruiser!

Comic Sans font.

The ‘nob trying to be a bit wacky’ font.

The Forthside Pedestrian Bridge in Stirling.

It’s a pedestrian bridge in that only pedestrians can use it – those in wheel chairs, with prams or bicycles are barred because the lifts never work. It takes you from a traffic island sort-of-outside Stirling railway station to a large expanse of tarmac where you then have to wander across a muddy field next to a half-finished set of shops. The path is too narrow and wanders like a meandering river – when you just want to go somewhere.

Chuffin’ useless.

And it was going to be called the Millennium bridge but opened late because nobody had built a bridge that worked before.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/8029524.stm

Chiller cabinets without doors.

I am always amazed at the chest freezers in supermarkets. Aldi/Lidl’s all have the slidey tops, whereas all the big supermarkets still use the open top versions. Madness for so many reasons.

What to open it with…..

Any hand dryer apart from air blades. Who signed of the design?
‘Does it work?’
‘Oh yes’
‘but my hands aren’t dry’
‘erm’

The hard plastic security bubble packaging that is impossible to open, except with a razor sharp knife. Plus, when its open, it leaves wound inflicting jaggy edges..

Those crappy little coffee cups with a handle only big enough for one finger if you are lucky.

LTV-1000 PEEP valve – has a ratchet in it that’s released by pushing in the yellow button on the end, but no-one knows this as it’s not obvious. And you have to keep cycling the display to see what PEEP you’ve actually set.

Strangely enough the 1200 series has a control for PEEP on the front panel like every other modern vent.