Packaging (2)


This is my first nom so, if it passes muster, be gentle.

Although I do mean packaging in general, I am mainly targeting retail packaging and although I am no packaging Nazi there are two specific examples which have incensed me, one a couple of years ago and one this week.

As an example of what I deem to be good packaging, I recently bought a new brush motor for a vacuum cleaner. This was sent from the manufacturers, an engineering company, and was in a box that was only just big enough to contain the motor and the folded-up invoice/receipt. This seems to be fairly par for the course, they waste as little as possible. It was also free delivery.

Then you have the two examples of retail and it’s a shame you can’t post pictures on this site. (You can but it’s a bit of a faff sometimes – Day Admin)

One was from Amazon. They’re not exactly known for appropriate packaging but this was in another league. It was a saw blade. 21”x1.5” and obviously flat. It came in a box. This box was 24”x15”x8” and contained the blade along with a mile of brown paper filler. What was wrong with wrapping it in cardboard tape and then just shoving it through the letterbox? I wrote to them but, of course, they ignored me.

The second was this week. I bought a face mask online because I liked the design and received it yesterday. This is a face mask, the size of a folded handkerchief but thinner. It came in an opaque polythene bag. This bag was in a 9”x7”x6” box with fucking BUBBLEWRAP!

I emailed the company concerned saying as follows:

I’d like to register my utter disgust at being forced to pay £4.99 for delivery.
For a face mask.
Which was packed in an opaque polythene bag.
Which was in a large box.
Which was basically full of BUBBLE WRAP.
I have a degree in Textile and Knitwear Technology and I can assure you that cotton fabric doesn’t break, explode, crush or otherwise get damaged by being sent through the post.
It could have been sent in the polythene bag.
With an address label and a 2nd class stamp on it.
For 65p.
NOT £4.99!

I wonder if they’ll reply and how they will try to justify ripping me off for P&P.

Nominated by moggie63

45 thoughts on “Packaging (2)

  1. Good one. Amazon employs drones, no sense, shit boring job. Why bother about what size box when you are going to be treated like a cunt.

  2. Don’t get me started on bastard Amazon and how they package items.

    Alright, you got me started. My Amazon nom is almost ready to go. I hate that fucking company.

    Good cunting by the way.

    I’d add that I’d like to meet the utter sadistic cunt who invented plastic clam shell packaging. You know the type. The type that tries to slice your fingers off as you try desperately to get to what’s inside. You, my lad, are an industrial grade twat.

    • Yeah, it’s a real cunt needing scissors to open the packet containing the fucking scissors you ordered.

  3. Spot on cunting. I ordered Tamiya Cement ( 40mls ) from Amazon during lockdown. Not only was the postage a fucking joke (4.99 ) but the tiny little bottle arrived in the most massive case they could possibly find. The box was stuffed with paper and packing shells to stop the little bottle rattling around. Fucking ridiculous! Cunts the lot of them.

  4. I ordered a book from Amazon. A package appeared on the doorstep. Empty. But very robust. Although they replaced it without quibble.
    Amazon packaging is a cunt but worse is trying to order without signing up for fucking prime. It takes sharp eyed cunning.

    • And it takes the detection levels of Sherlock Holmes to find a way of cancelling it once accidentally activating it. I’ve had to do it 3 times so far because I wasn’t paying enough attention and each time I spent ages looking for it.

  5. What ever happened to the packaging waste directive, I remember being involved with this back in the early 90’s, I believe minimising was part of the act.

    I haven’t had a problem with Amazon, from memory all the stuff I have bought came with the minimum of packaging but I have stuff delivered in boxes far bigger than required.

    My face masks arrived last week, 10 in an inner bag inside a plastic post bag, £1.55 for 10 including postage, Aldi were asking £3 for a pack of 4, exactly the same, cheeky cunts!

  6. O dislike anything that begins with that ‘Pack’ sound:
    Packaging
    Pal Choi
    Pacman

    and many others.
    🧔🏾

      • As Rocky replied conspiratorially when advised to put his money into Condominiums, “I never use ’em.”

        How are things, Spoony, esq.? Have you been run over recently?

      • Things are going splendidly, Captain M. Thankyou. 🙂

        Run over oh no thank Dog. Not since the first and only time. Thanks also to my high viability waistcoat, and the fairy lights attached to my walking stick. 🙂

    • *Pak choi

      shurely, Herr Kapitän?

      Although it’s often written “Bok choy” by the Shermans, it should really be written 白菜¹. This severally transliterates as:
      🗡 baahk choi (Yale system)
      🗡 baak6 coi3 (Jyutping system )
      🗡 [pàːk tsʰɔ̄ːy] (IPA system)
      etc.

      Confusingly, in the simpler² Pin Yin system, used in most of Mainland China, where “白菜” transliterates as “bai cai” it is a completely different vegetable. Although 白 always means “white” (et seq) and 菜 always means “vegetable” (et seq), in Mainland China what they call “white vegetable” is actually a totally different plant. Over here we call it Chinese cabbage, the Septics call it Napa cabbage.

      As you know, Herr Kapitän, the “confusion” between the p-sound [pak choi] and the b-sound [bok choy] is widespread. For examples of the so-called “minimal pair” /b/ and /p/ we need look no further than:
      🗡️ buy pie
      🗡️ bore poor
      🗡️ bit pit
      🗡️ bitch pitch
      🗡️ boar pour
      and at l long last & to get to your point, I believe, Herr Kap:
      ⚔️ Bakistan Pakistan

      ¹note that 白菜 is identical in Simplified and Traditional characters. The confusion between the actual vegetables arises because in Canton, a “white vegetable” is what we call pak choi, whereas elsewhere it is what we call Chinese cabbage.
      If you want what we call pak choi in most of Mainland China, you must request 青江菜. This transliterates (in pin yin) as qīngjiāngcài,. This roughly means “green river vegetable”
      ²I think it’s simpler. Not to be confused with simplified characters, loc cit

      • Bot Noodle™ is likely to be less virally active than a bottle Barazone™ pleach. Not a lot of people know that – other than Golden Wonder [now owned by Tayto]

        Hope you and Les are both well, HBH.

      • Tayto make Rancheros still you know?
        Now that genuinely rocked me to my core!
        My favourite crisps from the 70s still about on a island?
        Like jurrasic park for potato snacks!!
        Awfully nice☺

      • Goodness gracious me. I stamp ‘l’ instead of ‘k’ on my trusty Nokia phone and one awry letter unleashes a torrent of Chínk linguistics. Nonetheless, highly interesting and educational, Señor Orangêboom, though the italics are a smidgeon portentous.

        I only disagree with your transliterations. The Yale and Jyutping systems can jog on yet you’re almost there with the Indian Pale Ale one:

        /pæk tʃɔɪ/ sounds like a direct hit, doesn’t it?

        Your point about the stress fluctuations* in ‘p’ and ‘b’ is elsewhere in Asia. The Korean ‘b’ (ㅂ) is hardened to ‘p’ (ㅍ) and stretched to ‘bb’ (ㅃ) to further confuse foreign, white monkeys. Similarly ‘g’ and ‘k’ and ‘kk’ – ㄱ, ㅋ, and ㄲ.

        *Note the use of “fluctuations” to remind about the joke regarding the Asian Money Exchange which I shan’t repeat.

        Evening Les and HBH too.

      • Alright Maggie?👍
        I didnt really follow that exchange, but as for pak choi it doesnt feature much in my diet!☺

      • I especially savoured your spat with Dick Fiddler the other week; I have no wish to reduplicate such embarrassing tosh.

        I enjoyed the irony of “portentous”, however unintentional!

  7. You don’t need 300weight of paper,
    Strong tape, and plastic to ensure a pair of socks gets safely through the postal system.
    Theyre off their fuckin heads,
    Way over the top, thought these crybaby cunts had a social conscious and cared deeply about green issues?
    If I have to take a chainsaw to open a package id rather not buy it.
    Fucking idiots.

  8. Amazon are the most wasteful cunts on the planet. Boxes big enough to hold a small child containing a book. Usually filled with polystyrene chips or air filled bags that can’t be recycled.
    Other cunts are people who sell on eBay and use 12 bin bags and a whole roll of tape to wrap up a t shirt. Cunts.

  9. Great nom.
    The ‘rules’ of packaging seem to defy logic. I’m struggling with a bad back at the mo, so as a surprise the missus bought me the boxed set of ‘Person of Interest’ on line (great series by the way). It arrived in a cardboard box about five times bigger than the dvds, with NO inner packaging at all. Bonkers. Could have been sent in a much smaller box or a padded envelope.

    • The worst one is toothpaste. Paste, inside a tube, put into a box, then three cellophaned together, and you’re asked, “Do you need a bag?”
      Not, “Would you like a bag?” or “Do you want a bag?” Psh.
      The word NEED requires a nomination of its own.

      No, I don’t ‘need’ or ‘want’ a bag.

      Afternoon Ronan.

  10. That awful plastic that computer ink etc arrives in is fucking dangerous as well as near impossible to cut.

  11. You be paying for the packers. These be highly skilled persons with esoteric abilities that are used to exploit the buyer of goods from the company they work for.
    I have experienced similar on numerous occasions. I treat the appearance of massive amounts of pointless packaging as an excuse to play delivery man with the dogs or stuff the cuntish neighbour’s recycling bin with cardboard on top of polystyrene, which ain’t recycled here so they get a knobhead letter telling him what he can recycle. Always remove any address labels before having fun with packaging.

  12. I imagine picking and packing in a warehouse would be a boring job for someone. Day in day out.

    Imagine picking and packing adult novelty toys. It would be hilarious for the first couple of days. An antique steam powered vibrating phallus. Oh such giggles had by the workers seeing it come round the conveyor belt to be packed and sent to missus so and so. Do that every day. I imagine the novelty would wear off eventually.

  13. Amazon perhaps if they paid tax instead of avoiding it at all costs,they might not have the money to spend on such elaborate packaging
    Also Donna who makes great cakes so we are told In the adverts,sounds like a right cunt
    Sick em up yer arse Donna
    Amacunt more like

  14. The more packaging there is the more I like it.
    I just imagine it makes St.Greta writhe in agony.
    Fucking great!

    • Terry, imagine whilst popping bubble wrap. With each pop, Greta could sense it. She can be heard some where sensing it from miles away exclaiming, “How dare you!” with each satisfying pop.

  15. Perhaps we could use all this excess packaging to send various unwanted items back to Calais.😉
    Kind to the environment.
    Kind to the UK😀

  16. Great Cunting Moggster.

    My dear old auntie Phyll was moaning about this as far back as 1967 and Christ knows it’s 1,000 times worse now.

    Personal pet hate? Davistow cheese packaging. Needs a grenade to scythe it open

    • I used to hate the cheese they sold in Asda. It had a line to cut along to open it so you didn’t wreck the self-sealing strip. Except the line was about 3mm too far from the seal and you didn’t open it at all. I noticed a few weeks ago they have stopped doing them.

  17. Nearly lost my fingernails trying to remove an ice cream lid recently, also nearly disjointed my wrist trying to remove the cap from my HP Sauce bottle, it felt like it was welded on.

    • Funny you should mention a bottle. Although I rarely drink it, I had a sudden hankering for a glass of Baileys a few weeks ago. I don’t believe the bottle had been opened in a couple of years and you are dead right about it being welded on. In the end I had to use a pipe wrench to get the fucker off and even then it was bloody hard work.

      • Decades ago, I ended up with about 1/4 ” of glass thread from a bottle I was trying to open embedded in my thumb, GP – one of the old school, Trinity, Cambridge, IIRC, dug it out without any sort of painkiller. It was a cunt, especially as it was off a Listerine bottle. From the days when everybody knew you had bad breath, because Listerine smelt like a fumigated public toilet.

    • The worst fuckers imo were those cans that corned beef used to come in, the ones that had to be opened using a key to peel back a metal strip. Absolutely guaranteed to slice open your finger.

      • Ron, when opening a corned beef tin, don’t use that key. Instead, use a sturdy tin opener. The same with those Fray Bentos tinned pies. Use a sturdy tin opener not those cheap flimsy plastic ones or the skinny metal ones.

        When struggling to get the lid off jam jars use a thin implement to wedge in between the lid and the jar to break the airtight seal. It will then become easier to remove the lid.

        More handy tips at Spooningtons Cutlery Emporium.

  18. I especially savoured your spat with Dick Fiddler the other week; I have no wish to reduplicate such embarrassing tosh – but thanks for the rejoinder.

    Couldn’t see any italics, but I enjoyed the irony of your usage “portentous”, however unintentional!

    A Korean expert are we, Herr Kapitän? A friend from university has been through two wives from Busan and Seoul: both space cadets. My own knowledge of Mandarin is due to spending three years in Chongqing with the FCO. A mistake on many levels.

  19. I wonder if Greta’s enormous multi speed dildos come with minimal recyclable packaging?
    I buy supplies and sell stuff on Ebay so I keep all the packaging I get and reuse it, but for someone who doesn’t do this I imagine it begins to build up a bit.

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