one of my real bugbears of the last few years is the increasingly shitty quality of food packaging, one of the most obvious signs of increasing stupidity in society
a variety of foods and ingredients once came in resealable bags, which could easily be closed by pinching them shut, but no, once you've opened them you now have to get a bit of sticky tape to reseal them because the packaging has been redesigned to use 31% less plastic and 95% fewer IQ points
with milk cartons, half the time the tab comes off when you take off the lid, without shifting the seal underneath - fortunately the seals are not hard to remove with the fingers
yoghurt, soft cheese and similar come in plastic pots with sealed lids, and the idea is to open them by pulling tabs, but a lot of the time if you pull the tab, the tab just comes off without shifting the lid, and the lid is sealed so firmly you have to use a knife to open it, and if you don't use the pot's entire contents, you have to wrap it in clingfilm (more plastic) to protect it from the air
the worst one was a bottle of salad dressing sealed with a two-part closure, consisting of a ring-pull tab mounted in an assembly fixing it to the bottle, and a removable cap
naturally, like a fool, I tried pulling the ring on the tab, with the intent of removing it, only to have it break
even a pair of pliers couldn't shift the tab - the plastic was too soft to get a grip, so I ended up having to open it by taking a knife to the assembly, which bent it so far out of shape so it could no longer fit on the neck of the bottle, and the cap's threads are not compatible with the threads on the bottle, so again, I had to wrap the top of the bottle in clingfilm to protect it from the air
it's all just down to sheer stupidity and incompetence
