I’d outlaw sauce bottles which make getting it all out harder, especially the ones which don’t have the opening at the bottom and make it impossible to put the bottle with the opening facing downwards.
You must log in or # to comment.
Displaying any price other than the final price I have to pay inclusive of all fees and charges. I don’t care about a number that has some mathematical relationship to what’s going to come out of my bank account, just tell me the price. This always annoys me so much when I travel to the US but it’s probably like that in a few other places too.
And lying about why something is charged, although it’s not silly. A takeaway website I worked for adds “service charge” which is literally just a delivery charge, but hidden, because you only see it during finalization. It doesn’t apply to pick-up orders, only delivery. Many websites seem to had adopted it so they can lie about the free delivery.
touch-sensitive controls in vehicles need to be outright illegal. All controls, regardless of how esoteric, should be operable by feel.
Also on stoves. “Oh, you wanna turn off a burner? Sorry, your fingers are too wet. Also, I hope you remembered to read the 300 page manual because we’ve never even heard of intuitive controls”
The controls on my stove are those weird flat buttons you’d see on a lot of late 90’s appliances? Like they don’t “press” at all but they do respond to pressure so I could preheat my oven with the end of a spoon or something. Those are superior to capacitive touch controls.
Well apparently some company had to try this on the vehicles 🤣
Billboards. Get them out of here! Everyone gets to put their name on the side of the building in at most 2m tall black or white Time New Roman.
Huh it would be nice to walk around the city with less advertisements
In the US there are 4 states that have outlawed billboards: Vermont, Maine, Alaska, and Hawaii. I absolutely would not complain if it became nationwide.
Some states also seem to prohibit billboards on certain stretches of highway. There was a state highway I used to take daily in Connecticut and there were no billboards anywhere.
I will never understand the Pay Attention to the Road type billboards on some highways here
Broaden this to any ads on the streets. Billboards are the most egregious, but I’d actually kill for a society where I can get from my home to a grocery with nothing trying to sell me something.
I am okay with the business itself having signage on its property visible from far enough away for travelers to make navigational decisions. I’m also okay with those state-issued signs on large highways that point out things like lodging, fuel and food which must conform to certain guidelines. And in this case, I’d prefer using clear and distinctive logos which are recognizable by color and shape so that motorists can recognize them faster and spend more of their attention on the road.
I think those could be considered less ads and more just informational postings, particularly the food and fuel lines a la the signs at each interstate exit that tells you the amenities available near any given exit. Considering, as well, that they usually have several competitors on the same sign, and it feels even less ad-like
It’s closer to the scale of what “advertising” should be if it wasn’t the bloated cancerous mass that it is today. I want businesses to exist and I want interested customers to be able to find these businesses, but I don’t want to be told “I’m not a dish, I’m a man” nine times an hour. Signs along the interstate that say “Hey at this next exit there’s a McDonald’s and a Denny’s, an Exxon and a BP truck stop, and a Holiday Inn” are genuinely useful.
I’m ambivalent on this one. If the ad on a building serves to keep the charges from tenants lower then I don’t mind (given the ad is somewhat tasteful). Ads for the sake of ads? Yea, fuck that.
Funny joke, that. Passing on savings to the end user.
Passing savings on to the tenants, eh? What incentive does the business owner have to do so?
I disagree with the requirement for plain labels. Trademarks exist for consumer protection as well as business protection; I want Gatorade to hold a trademark on clear bottles with lightning bolts on the front and orange caps, because I don’t want to be fooled into buying Negligent Uncle Greg’s Geterade. If anything, I would force companies to use fewer of them; no hosing Amazon with 900,000 differently branded permutations of the same product.
Single-use plastic packaging! All packaging now comes in a set of standard ISO sizes and satisfying some engineering constraints and requirements. You get a Coke from a convenience store - it comes as a 0.5L glass bottle. You finish with it, put it on a rack inside the store with all the other empty 0.5L bottles to be taken back to the factory to be washed and inspected for chips and reused. It could be filled with Pepsi next time! Just slap on a new paper label.
I wouldn’t call it a silly issue myself. I’d ban all plastic packaging unless proven to have no alternative. I’m also infiuriated with countries for making easily recyclable materials actively hard to recycle: speaking of glass. They make it so you have to take it to a recycling point, which can be sparse depending on your idea. Glass and metals are amazing for recycling. But no, make everything plastic and actively push people away from purchasing glass by making them have to go out of their way to recycle it. Plastic bottles frequently aren’t even better. I had multiple plastic sauce bottles break akin to glass and leak out.
which can be sparse depending on your idea
Yes! Which is why my idea is to have a collection point at every point of sale. And the first aim will be to reuse the packaging, not even recycle it (melt it down)! This is why ISO standardization is necessary - you don’t want to keep track of Coke bottles and Pepsi bottles, they need to be identical. The same truck that delivers a pallet of bottles from the factory to your store will take the pallet of empties out.
I cannot agree on the reuse. The amount of CO2 emited from the extra transportation and water wasted on cleaning, plus the possibility of lower sanitary quality all add into it making less sense than recycling, but perhaps I’m wrong and those are of lesser negative value than the process of recycling.
The numbers I heard is that reusing a bottle is less energy intensive than melting it down. It’s sanitary if you sterilize it properly by heating to >100°C, which is still much less energy than heating it to 1723°C to melt. As for water, I try to think on a 100 year time scale, where water is a renewable resource, but plastic is not.
It’s true that the energy savings will be wasted if you end up trucking the pallet of glass soda bottles all the way across America! But you shouldn’t be trucking bottles that far anyway - you should be sending rail tanker cars full of syrup to a bottling plant in each state and use local water to mix it.
Single use plastic in general. I skipped bagging my veggies at the grocer today because it felt wasteful.
I heard a great talk with Sian Sutherland on plastic reduction recently, specifically around brand agnostic standardized metal bottles: https://youtu.be/jTs6KejhSg4?feature=shared
While we’re on the subject of plastic packaging:
I want the recent Dutch law on single use plastics to be significantly rewritten.
So they passed a law, requiring sellers to charge people for single use plastic containers. Sounds cool, right? Well, the law has some problems:
- the seller is allowed to set the surcharge to be as high as they want it to be.
- the seller may keep the money from the surcharge
- the seller is not required to offer an alternative
- the seller can refuse to honour people’s request for them using their own packaging
So effectively, they’ll set the surcharges to be as low as they can, and don’t bother allowing anyone to use alternatives. If you go to a snack bar, ask for a serving of fries, and offer your own bowl to put them in, the seller can just tell you “NOPE”
So I think the law should be retooled to cover these issues. The prices should be set from above, the money should go to the state, and the seller must honour customers’ requests for using their own packaging alternatives.
the seller can refuse to honour people’s request for them using their own packaging
Preposterous! How are we expected to reduce our consumption of single use containers if we are not allowed to use anything else?
I’ve had great success bringing my own sealable glass bowls when I want to get takeout and they eyeball out the regular size portion for me. But here currently it’s only possible on an ad-hoc basis, by asking as a favor as a regular, since it’s just not part of custom. It would be great if bring-your-own-container was protected and encouraged by law!
My city passed a plastic bag ban recently and I was skeptical about it at first but it actually has been a great help. Not even so much in banning the bags themselves, but in changing the culture and expectations. Now it feels perfectly normal to bring in your own canvas bags to shop because everyone does it, whereby before you’d look like a weirdo for doing it.
The worst part about plastic bottles is the energy required to make them.
They go through a 2 stage process where the plastic is melted and injection molded into a “pre-form”
Then they get fed into a blowmolding machine where they are heated in different areas by many 2k watt halogen bulbs. Once they’ve been heated properly they go into the blow mold where they are pressurized with ~500psi air.
The molds are liquid cooled through an industrial pipe system with an extremely large refrigeration system. The energy required to run all of the equipment is insane. A factory can consume as much energy in one hour as a standard home will in an entire year.
This doesn’t include all of the energy required for moving materials around since performs can be made at one factory and shipped to another and empty bottles are often shipped to warehouses and then off to the plant where they will be filled, then warehoused then distributed etc.
Asking for or even suggesting tips of any kind anywhere. Also gratuities, service fees, and any other kind of made up fee. Show a price, end of story.
Also outlaw not including taxes. Show full complete prices.
I agree. Pay the people a livable wage and price the product accordingly, with taxes included.
But I do want to still know how much of the cost is tax. Basically an all in cost, but as transparent as possible
Fine, but me personally, I don’t care how much is tax. Do it like gasoline. Tax is already part of it.
The last part is made more complicated by having different tax rates on different items in different places at different times.
You see a national ad for Walmart with a widget on sale. Depending on what city and state you buy it, the price will change because the tax rates are different between and even within jurisdictions.
Maybe the Walmart you go to has a development agreement where they pay higher local tax as a way to cover the infrastructure project the City has to complete to support the building. Or maybe it’s the opposite and Walmart built a bunch of streets an utilities they dedicated to the City and now they don’t pay sales tax to the local jurisdiction.
Or maybe on September 1st sales tax rates changed in the middle of an ad campaign. Or maybe there’s an additional tax exemption due to a Development Agreement.
Or maybe that kayak is no longer taxed at the time sale because you bought a trolling motor at the same time and now it’s classified as a motor boat and the customer pays state sales tax when they register it with the state?
It’s really, really difficult to predict taxes when you’ve for so many wacky jurisdictional issues that affect the tax rate.
I think if a company gets large enough to cover multiple jurisdictions, then you can expend the cost to figure that all out. If anything it might make it harder for these mega companies. Screw em. They make plenty of profit. They’ll adapt.
Separately, more consistent taxation would be nice.
Half of the scenarios you noted are not ones I have ever heard of (and I would bet are totally made up). Why would WalMart shoppers be exempt from sales tax?
You are right that advertising price with tax may be unreasonable. That does not preclude the store from putting the price with tax on the shelf. Out of all the scenarios you described, the only one that this would not cover is having an item be taxed differently if bought in conjunction with another item, but that can be noted in the same way that stores note a bundle or a bulk sales price ($1 each or 5 for $4).
There is difficulty in the case of a charge in tax rate (how often do those happen? Once every few years) or if there is a tax holiday (I see plenty of clothing stores have a sign for “15% off the marked price”). Those can be handled by having computer controlled shelf prices, which have existed for at least 20 years but never caught on much.
Tipping.
Just kidding. Tipping isn’t silly. It’s downright racist, sexist, and prevents fair working wages for many.
It also leads to worse service. US dining is fuckin tedious. Every 5 minutes someone harasses you, doing the fake smile thing, etc
In my country you just shout if you need something, or there’s just a bing-bong button on the table. they leave you alone unless you ask, and you pay only what’s on the bill
I do appreciate when a worker in a restaurant has a legitimate conversation and is social, if they can see when it’s appropriate and welcomed. And to add context, I’m not talking about the waiter hovering like you’re describing, I’m talking about something I’ve only ever seen from immigrant family restaurants where they’ve come from a culture where eating is still a social community activity, or possibly when a chef takes pleasure in knowing you’re enjoying their experience. The always transactional nature of eating in society has started to annoy me. But it’s very different to when someone is being paid to try and make your experience good, that’s inevitably plastic and coerced.
It’s a fair point that it can be racist and sexist. I’m sure the attractive get paid more. After all, strippers are the ultimate in tipped workers. They have to pay for the opportunity to work for tips.
We do need to get over this “poor tipped workers”, though.
There’s a reason why no tipping restaurants end up failing and returning to tips.
It’s because you make much more in tips than you’d make otherwise.
It’s like no one has ever worked for tips and honestly calculated what they made.
I worked for tips in high school. I didn’t make that much money again until people started calling me doctor.
Yeah, you can’t have tipping and no tipping side by side. Customers will like the appearance of lower prices and many front house workers will make bank. I’ve worked back of house and front and worked twice as hard and actually used culinary skills in the back and made less than I did receiving tips in the front. I think that’s pretty messed up. The post was about making things illegal. I think most forms of tipping should be. That levels the playing field.
Illegal?
This place is so toxic.
so toxic
*This place is so different to my outdated opinions ftfy
There’s a reason
That article says the workers are unhappy with their $30 per hour because the restaurant is only open part-time so they’re not getting the hours they need to make a good wage. The restaurant plans to open full time though
It doesn’t support your argument in any way whatsoever
How do restaurants in every single other country survive then, according to your theory?
So what you’re saying is that they would get more money by being tipped?
Because there is not a tipping culture in those countries, and they wouldn’t make more money from tips?
I’m not sure why this is so hard to understand.
He’s saying the restaurant in the article needs to be open more, and asking how come restaurants in places where tipping is not the norm are doing just fine.
Also, blaming things on “culture” is a handwaving non-argument. I am certain there are some systemic things that make tip-free restaurants work, that could be replicated in the US. Like, as the article describes, raising staff wages. And keeping the hours reasonable.
Bottled water in every country where the tap water is safe to drink.
I’d shift that slightly.
Bottled water can be useful in emergencies and disaster situations, but they should be treated like other emergency items/rations. People should use reusable containers as much as possible, and the companies should NOT get to suck up all the water they want for free.
Good feedback!
Sirens and emergency vehicle noise in songs or advertising on radio.
I’m not advocating for capital punishment, I’m just saying that if we lynch a couple of daytime pop radio hosts for siren-like noises then it will probably go away pretty quickly.
The other day I had a song come on Spotify in which a part of the beat sounded like the cars warning beep. But it was not the right speed to be door or seat belt alarm, so I figured it had to be some else like tire pressure or engine warning… Mother fucker was part of a song and kept me looking for warning lamps blinking for a good minute or so.
I feel that lost minute in my soul my brother in suffering.
I want to throw in doorbells with this (but only as a misdemeanor)
I use Pluto.tv for background noise at night. Amazon is now running some ‘Prime Deal Days’ ads and one of them has a very prominent doorbell sound that wakes my ass up everytime.
All I Want for Christmas is You by Mariah Carey
Bluetooth speakers on hiking trails.
Is it that bad? I mean, whats wrong with loose calm music?
Plenty of time, it’s not calm music. You’ll have people blasting TikTok pop, rap, hardcore techno, or other attacks against ears. In a place where the whole point to go there is to be in nature.
deleted by creator
Car locks that trigger the horn and lights. Whatever asshole engineer decided that was a good idea (instead of just making the key fob blink or something) clearly has never had neighbors.
This can be turned off on every car I have ever interacted with by holding specific buttons on the key fob
You and I may be the only two people in the world who do that.
Most cars I’ve experienced announce it only visually, using the blinkers.
Or the stupidly sensitive car alarms that react to the slightest movement (ahem BWM and Audi and Mercedes)
Everytime I take a ferry those vehicles are blaring their alarms for the entire trip and they need to announce on the P.A for the owner to come back and turn the alarm off.
Life pro tip, if you leave your car on the ferry, don’t turn your alarm on!
I used a great app along with an ODB2 adapter to turn that off. No more honking of the horn, but the lights do give a quick blink.
This also turns off the headlight auto timer for when you park. Quick click and my aux lights give a blink and turn off.
Works great, though the only time I really drive is the one day a month into my offices and occasionally to the food store.
Any chargeable device that you can carry needs to have one standard charging port.
Apparently Its called ‘type C’
Still a decent amount of micro-USB and mini-USB devices around, not to mention iPhones took until 2023 to transition
This
Junk mail. All that paper and ink wasted just for me to throw it straight in the trash.
It’s the volume of junkmail that makes the economy of scale work such that is cheap enough to… send junkmail
I toss it in the recycling bin on the way back to the house. My sister’s ex used to obsess over it, though, and put it in a pile to be shredded. Then he never shredded it. His home office was a hoarders nest with yellowing junk mail everywhere.
If everyone just writes “return to sender” on it Nd sticks it in a mailbox, I’m pretty sure it’ll be outlawed.
Manufacturers not taking responsibility of their waste not just of manufacturing but after what they produced hits the garbage dumps. I think if you make something, you should be responsible for un-making its physical world impact.
Ooh! Packaging that is deceptively large. For example, it should be illegal to sell a 6 inch tall tube of deodorant that’s only got three inches of deodorant in it.
Potato chips are the worst for this
Potato chips are the one case where it’s valid. The air pumped into the bag protects the chips from being crushed in transit.
IT’s one thing when the bag is inflated to act as an air cushion around the chips. it’s another to make the bag twice as tall as it needs to be.
There’s also a reason for that too. The bag not only needs to be inflated with air to protect the chips, but it also has to have plenty of room for that air to expand and contract due to atmospheric pressure changes. For example, if you made the bag just big enough for the chips and enough air that when pushed or squished a bit it doesn’t cave in on the chips. And your manufacturing plant is at sea level. When those chip bags go on a truck and arrive at 8,000 feet in Colorado. All the bags would be popped because the air inside expanded far beyond the left over capacity of the bag, so POP!
It’s amazing that people still don’t understand why there is air in chip bags.
Yeah, I mean, we all know it’s to keep the chips in suspended animation until the bag is opened and their lives concluded for snacks, right?
Man, I feel like that used to be true–maybe. I feel like the bags are only 1/4 to 1/3 full now. And the chips are still mostly crushed. I feel ripped off even buying chips, so I’m trying to stop entirely. Win?
Huh TIL
