Wednesday, December 10, 2008

How hard..

Is it to make something that actually lasts if you use it for it's intended purpose? With the bit of snow we've gotten, I broke out the trusty shovel to hopefully avoid any lawsuits or attempts to break my own neck by shoveling off the deck leading to our back door. First thing I noted was the metal edge of the shovel was worn down to nothing. Really, that wouldn't be so bad, except that it's only worn out in the dead center of the shovel. The rest pretty much looks like new?! Add in that I purposely spent the money when I bought it to get a better shovel that included a heavy duty handle, etc, etc, and I was a bit pissed.

Why does every fucking thing in our society have to be disposable? Wow, I feel like I'm an old man bitching about things being different back in my day. But seriously, everything has planned obsolescence built into it anymore. Take my shovel. A bit heavy gauge steel and a little more quality control (in not making it wear out in one spot first) and I bet it would surely lasted 8-10 years or better. Nope, a couple years in and now I'm scouring stores for a suitable replacement. Sure I could go with an aluminum grain scoop, but it's not the shovel type I'm looking for. However, everything else is as cheap or more cheaply built as the current POS I've all ready got.

So, what am I planning to do about it? Well, as soon as I get a minute or two, I'll be breaking out the tools and replacing the cutting edge with something a bit more "hefty". Sure it won't look all nice and pretty like something I got from the store, but you can bet your ass it'll last a helluva lot longer. There's just a huge disconnect in our society that takes things being disposable as the only way to do business. I can only do so much personally and there's much more I could do, but dammit I'm lazy and like to bitch so I'll just take the cream off the top. However, there's way too many people that don't even do the easy things.

/Rant off

1 comment:

Unknown said...

i'll second that...