Yesterday, I used my old person's Wednesday discount at B & Q and bought my first Workmate (this is a sort of bench/vice for DIYers for those who do not know.)
With the discount, it came to about £22 which is all I really wanted to pay for something I am going to bastardise for one job only, and I did not pay for the next one up at £70, for these reasons.
It was flat-packed and I took it back for assembly. Three hours later after much swearing and scrutiny of inscrutable Chinese illustrated instructions, it remains in peices at my workshop where I left it to go to the pub. I will never laugh at Cro and his flat-packing experiences again.
I quite often buy old vacuum cleaners at charity shops for about £5 (I bought one recently to clean the car), because the people who give them away do not have a compressor to blow it out and make it work properly. The one I bought last week was a designated 'Pet' one, whatever that means.
It was such a bad design that one vital component could not be taken apart to clean, and I spent about three hours manually pulling stuff out of tiny, conical holes where it had gathered. An observer remarked that I had made its £5 cost meaningless, but I said this would be the case only if time is money to you, which it has never been to me. The poor always pay more for everything in the long run.
This same person spent about a week making a luggage holder for the roof of his car, using sheet aluminium on a steel frame. The cost of the materials and the time it took to make made the price of one bought in a shop (which would not let in water as his does) seem very inexpensive. As inexpensive as Trump's walls, but not as great, beautiful, powerful and fantastic.
As much as it pains me to say so, considering your time in the kennels, what you did buy was false economy.
ReplyDeleteThis is where it pays to be a woman - not least to add to the gross national product. You hire a man who can. Which means, since currently I am probably even poorer than you, I don't buy anything, don't need to pay anyone and have the most wonderful shelving system assembled mainly from Lidl's (Aldi's cousin) cardboard avocado, ginger and other boxes. They give an illusion of "wood", are user friendly. Upshot being I am not part of the race any more. I look from the outside in like that matchbox girl in winter with her nose pressed against the window of a candy shop. Or maybe, that was Audrey Hepburn.
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I am that man who is normally hired. I am supposed to be an expert, and I have supposed to have been an expert for about 40 years. I would pay to be a woman.
DeleteMy husband has so been there and so done that -- except he usually tries to avoid reading the instructions -- no matter what the language or how good the illustrations...
ReplyDeleteGolden rule: Take it out of the pack and try to use it before reading instructions. All men know that.
DeleteThat end stage, where time is less valuable than money. May it last long and prosper us.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. though I do value time, just not in terms of money.
DeleteAs you are aware, I now offer my considerable experience and advice to those who buy anything flatly packed. Usually my advice is 'Don't'.
ReplyDeleteThen I do not know why you don't get a little man from the village in?
DeleteReading my sentence above makes me understand why I am always using the conversational apostrophe, as in 'don't. Anything else sounds like I am telling you off.
DeleteI would never agree to the farmer buying any flat pack - there would be a nervous breakdown in the house (either him or me).
ReplyDeleteHow were you delivered, or did he just choose you at market, Weave?
DeleteYou buy old vacuum cleaners?
ReplyDeleteBloody hell.....a geek
My hobby helps to keep my life empty. I am, unlike you, bagless.
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