Perforation Conspiracy!

At the various factories of the world, evil bean counters are saving their respective clients money hand over fist - cheating us little people in the process - by incorrectly setting the machines that make perforations!

Take any brand of macaroni and cheese as a clear example. At the top side of the box, we find a circular dotted line, a perforated thumb, and we are told to, “press here”. Does this work for anyone? It certainly doesn't work for me. The box will deform before the circle of small cuts gives way. Usually, I resort to ripping the top of the box off.

A box of hot chocolate recently gave me the same trouble. The individual packets of hot cocoa come in twos, connected by perforations. To get just one packet, you have to separate the two foil packets. You, my patient reader, might think that a simple rip would suffice, but watch out! You must very carefully break each connection – if one just rips, one or both bags tear open along the side and chocolate powder leaks all over, usually somewhat violently thanks to the force needed. It's a very clever scheme...

Toilet paper is my most recent run in with this greedy plot. Here the perforations have cleverly been set too deep, or the cuts made too closely together. The slightest tug and the paper rips. If you want to take many sheets in order to fold the paper over for that morning dump, forget it. It will rip after the first two or three sheets, giving so little that not even a Great Depression survivor would be satisfied. It's rigged, forcing you to try again, only slower. The first bit you grabbed is useless by itself, so you grab more to compensate and in the process, deplete your TP faster forcing you to return to the store sooner.

Think how much money a company can save by adjusting their machines by just the smallest fraction, if that machine cranks out thousands of widgets per day...