{"id":1125,"date":"2016-03-10T11:06:10","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T17:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2016\/03\/10\/160310_boxes\/"},"modified":"2022-04-26T07:03:58","modified_gmt":"2022-04-26T12:03:58","slug":"160310_boxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2016\/03\/10\/160310_boxes\/","title":{"rendered":"Boxing Batch"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hate to alarm you, but we have a packaging crisis in the United States. As in…too much of it. This became obvious yesterday upon the arrival of two items we had ordered.<\/p>\n

Exhibit A is a dress that MLB<\/acronym> purchased from the website of a well-known clothier. Here’s the box in which it was shipped (I included her to give you a sense of scale):<\/p>\n

\"Huge<\/p>\n

Now, I could understand this kind of packaging if she had ordered, say, a suit of medieval armor, or if she starred in a reality show on Spike TV entitled Gargantuan and Sexy<\/i>, but in truth it was a little filmy dance dress, and she qualifies for only part of that imaginary TV series. Anyway, I have no idea what the shipper was thinking. Perhaps they had run short of dress-sized boxes. Perhaps they were simply responding to a perceived “bigger = more valuable” philosophy that accompanies our tendency to super-size our consumption. Or, more likely, the guy in the shipping department just grabbed the closest box.<\/p>\n

Exhibit B came in the form of a Nutribullet<\/a> (I know; that’s a topic for another discussion) that we ordered from Wal-Mart. Here’s how the less-than-two-feet-tall device was packaged:<\/p>\n

\"Nesting<\/p>\n

In this case, the shipping department employee was either a big fan of matryoshka dolls<\/a>, or really into recursion. Or, we should not completely discount that he was influenced by a recent meal of turducken. Anyway, while Nutribullet is obviously proud of its product (as evidenced by what they charge for it), packaging it more securely than a shipment of weapons-grade plutonium seems a bit excessive.<\/p>\n

And speaking of excessive, after she unpacked the boxes, MLB spoke of the largest box being “filled with intestines.” I was simultaneously intrigued and repulsed, but here’s what she was referring to:<\/p>\n

\"Snaking<\/p>\n

I admit to being impressed that someone was actually able to get anything else into the Master Box\u2122 along with that air-filled serpent. I was less impressed with the effort it took to deflate each one of those little pillows so I could get them into a trash can. It was much less satisfying than bubble wrap.<\/p>\n

Boxing Day is a big deal in Canada; perhaps the US needs to start observing an Unboxing Day.<\/p>\n

Note: I put this post into the “Design” category, because packaging engineering<\/a> is a real thing. Anyone who’s ever struggled to open a box of cereal knows that the right design makes a big difference.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hate to alarm you, but we have a packaging crisis in the United States. As in…too much of it. This became obvious yesterday upon the arrival of two items we had ordered. Exhibit A is a dress that MLB purchased from the website of a well-known clothier. Here’s the box in which it was… Continue reading Boxing Batch<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","category-society-culture","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10180,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125\/revisions\/10180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}