Surfeit of variety
Too many models. Of light bulbs, I mean. Sometime during the night, one of the two bulbs in my stove hutch burned out. Minor detail in cooking, extremely important during my speed read of the newspaper each morning. I hear the delivery, I grab the paper and I try to go cover to cover in minutes. Not possible in the dark.
The last time around, I took the carton for the proper model of bulb and put it on a high shelf. Today, I was prepared to face the variety of wattages, base types, angle of beam, lumens, length of life, etc. etc. One small glitch; the box had changed so I was back to square one, shopping for what used to be generic. Finally had to get a consultant involved. And that’s silly.
Do we really need the range of models of just about anything that make shopping such an adventure? Are stores forced into a SKU spiral? Why can’t we use the logic of Ford’s Model T? Any colour you want, as long as it’s black… We mustn’t restrict the free market, but when it takes me twenty minutes to get a light bulb, things may have gone close to the edge of the cliff.
Our staggered viewing schedule for Community is starting to take a toll. The free over the web TV service has a maximum of 72 minutes viewing in any given day; enough for three episodes. But, if the day shift watches other stuff, the night shift gets knocked offline in the middle of the show. Inconvenient, to use a polite term.
