{"id":9632,"date":"2006-05-22T13:52:38","date_gmt":"2006-05-22T20:52:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2006\/05\/22\/the-unopenable-package.html"},"modified":"2006-05-22T13:52:38","modified_gmt":"2006-05-22T20:52:38","slug":"the_unopenable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/05\/22\/the_unopenable.html","title":{"rendered":"The Unopenable Package"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who needs to send our troops body armor? Just package them in that insanely hard and uncuttable packaging<\/a> that so much stuff is armored in these days, and they’d be safe from anything the insurgents could throw at them.<\/p>\n

The bottom line is the bottom line. Retailers demand the hard-to-open packaging to avoid “shrinkage,” or shoplifting, a problem that cost U.S. stores more than $10 billion a year or $25 million a day, according to statistics from the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention. They also want the item to be visible to customers and capable of withstanding the rigors of long-distance shipping from manufacturing plants in Asia.<\/p>\n

“In a nutshell, it is pretty much all about retail theft,” says Mary Ann Falkman, editor-in-chief of Packaging Digest, a trade publication. “Retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and the like who sell these small electronic toys and gadgets demand that they be put in packaging that’s next to impossible to steal from. But they could make it easier to open it when you get it home.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And for those who think it’s all kind of funny:<\/p>\n

But it’s not just a matter of customer frustration. These packages pose real danger. Data on the topic is irregularly collected and vague; the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s most recent accounting, in 2001, listed “unintentional cut\/pierce” as the fifth most common cause of nonfatal unintentional injury, but that also includes the much more common assortments of knife accidents owing to normal kitchen work.<\/p>\n

Anecdotally, though, emergency room doctors say they’re slammed the week after Christmas with such injuries and see them regularly all year. Dr. Christian Arbelaez, a Boston-area ER physician, sees about a case a week, some as serious as tendon and nerve damage that require orthopedic surgeons to repair.<\/p>\n

“I would definitely like to tell (manufacturers) that serious hand injuries are occurring because of this packaging,” said Arbelaez, a member of the Trauma Care and Injury Control National Committee of American College of Emergency Physicians. “Especially for people who have jobs that require the use of their hands a lot, this can be detrimental to their careers. There needs to be some kind of change.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who needs to send our troops body armor? Just package them in that insanely hard and uncuttable packaging that so much stuff is armored in these days, and they’d be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hi-tech"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13627,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/11\/03\/ending_wrap_rage.html","url_meta":{"origin":9632,"position":0},"title":"Ending “wrap rage”","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 3-Nov-08 10:53am","format":false,"excerpt":"I now have yet another reason buy stuff from Amazon.com, to wit, their new crusade against excess packaging and packaging that is nearly impossible to work through.\u00a0 I think we've...","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":870,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/11\/08\/paging_inspecto.html","url_meta":{"origin":9632,"position":1},"title":"Paging Inspector Javert …","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 8-Nov-01 11:10am","format":false,"excerpt":"California's Three Strikes law is under fire. 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Folks who struggle with it eventually develop shortcuts -- defeating the packaging (by...","rel":"","context":"In "Science & Nature"","block_context":{"text":"Science & Nature","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/science"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9092,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/02\/20\/in_security.html","url_meta":{"origin":9632,"position":3},"title":"In-Security","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 20-Feb-06 1:55pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Some people get bothered by some things than other people. I, honestly, don't find stores checking my receipt and bag on the way out to be all that onerous. Whether...","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":17482,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/05\/28\/unblogged-bits-fri-28-may-10-2000.html","url_meta":{"origin":9632,"position":4},"title":"Unblogged Bits (Fri. 28-May-10 2000)","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 28-May-10 6:00pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries .... Christine Schwen: Yet another Beck warning falls apart under scrutiny - \"Pay attention to me! I'm making up terrific stuff here! ACORN! Stalin! HuffPo!\" Matt Gertz: Beck doubles down on stupid take on World\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Potpourri"","block_context":{"text":"Potpourri","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/potpourri"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":38370,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/08\/06\/baby-you-can-search-my-car.html","url_meta":{"origin":9632,"position":5},"title":"Baby, you can search my car","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 6-Aug-13 11:03am","format":false,"excerpt":"Homeland Security Executive Summary: We can search anything, anytime, anywhere (or compel others to do so for us), because, y'know, TERRORISTS. \u00a0And if we do, you might get lucky and get\u00a0a slip of paper saying it happened, unless we think that info should be confidential, because, y'know, TERRORISTS.Note: the TSA\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}