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Also Lezyne bicycle pumps, which I think unscrew the valve core for everybody.
Nope, if it happens more than once, it's not the pumps fault.
Re mudguards - PDW Fenders are your solution.
But Hannah's coffee table gets my vote, for all the reasons she has listed
Anything with Apple written on it. I don’t know why, they give me the rage every time.
I've only owned two Apple products - an AirTag and an Apple TV unit.
I sold the Apple TV unit after less than a week of usage as the remote was a hateful piece of design.
Can I add an honourable mention for the 'infotainment system' on my Skoda? Apparently it wants to update itself, a message came up when I was going 30mph. Fine, I think, please yourself, press OK. But no, it can't do it unless it's stationary. OK, I think, I'll do it quickly when I get where I'm going. Prompt disappears, does not reappear until several days later when I'm going somewhere else at 30mph. There is nowhere in the menu system that allows it to happen. It's been wanting its update for about six months now.
Why does my OnePlus phone automatically start the PowerAmp app when I connect to my AudioPro BT5 device?
I often want to use a different app to Bluetooth music/podcasts etc to it?
Chuffing annoying!
my shower is a Mira advance with only gravity fed cold water feed
I'll look at mine, its the same.
Ive attached the hot water tap to the shower hose so i get a good shower now. Had to turn the cold inlet down,and it always beeps but mostly a great shower now. The drain pump is way too noisy though
But security cameras- i have one to monitor wildlife in the garden-ie the blackbird- but rain sets it off every 2 minutes, it only record twice in daylight, and still the hedgehogs food is gone and i dont know if its a rat getting fat
and wildlife cams- either the batteries dont work once its outside, teh timers wrong or the sd card got forgotten
This bag of crap that masquerades as a vacuum cleaner.
You basically have to also own a compressor to clean the thing out after every minute of use.
It even came with the most annoying wall bracket in the world.
A decent design would incorporate the charger, but no it’s just a badly designed hook.
You also need another vacuum cleaner for what falls out of it when you hang it up.
Toasters: I was slated by the then to be father in law for buying a £40 toaster. 14 years later it's still going strong. It started smelling funny and not toasting well, I feared that was the end so I turned it upside down and out fell the end of a flower stalk.
I'd say it's a Morphy Richards but I'm not sure as all the decals have worn off.
I e worked with ropes for over 2 decades and they're pricks. They always tangle and knot them selves.
maybe wine glasses. They’re a stupidly fragile and not very stable, yet they are meant to hold a liquid that will very definitely stain your carpet and sofa.
I have to use a tumbler to drink wine from because of those pricks. IN MY OWN HOUSE, OVER THE CARPETS I PAID FOR. Arseholes.
The Henry vacuum cleaner (relegated) in the garage. Great when being used but when not it becomes downright malevolent and will uncoil and launch itself round my ankles like a rabid python if I go anywhere near it.
And the clothes dryer with clothes on that collapses when I walk past.
Also door handles, vicious little ****s. So many trousers with pockets or belt loops ripped.
Always happens at a "bad time". Anyone else find themselves yelling "Dont you start *****" at the time....
The Crash avoidance warning on our Focus , thing loses it's shit when there's no chance of me hitting anything 🙄Trouble is an alarm goes off without warning that instinctively makes you panic for nothing 🙄
I've found the sensitivity setting now and tamed it down hopefully that'll stop it's gallop . That was an ordeal in itself the setting was in a sub menu of a sub menu of a sub menu 😡
My apple compost caddy. Looks all fancy and cute, but tapers in at the top and has a lip around the inside that means getting a full bag out to put in the food waste recycling is a 50/50 gamble on whether the bag splits or not.
The Crash avoidance warning on our Focus , thing loses it’s shit when there’s no chance of me hitting anything 🙄Trouble is an alarm goes off without warning that instinctively makes you panic for nothing 🙄
I’ve found the sensitivity setting now and tamed it down hopefully that’ll stop it’s gallop . That was an ordeal in itself the setting was in a sub menu of a sub menu of a sub menu 😡
That thing is flippin' dangerous. I've also managed to turn down the sensitivity but basically, just when IT thinks there's something dangerous ahead it shouts "BING BING BING LOOK AT ME" and flashes a bit orange thing in the console thus immediately taking your eyes off the road and wondering what the **** is going on, just when it thinks you should be paying attention and avoiding an accident.
I must be tired, I just read the thread title as “intimate objects which are pricks” and thought… well, yeah?
Are you suggesting that the British plug is bad design?
US plugs on the other hand... A sure fire way to spend ages in a hotel room trying to get your adapter+plug to stay seated well enough to work without falling out if you go to close to it or look at it in the wrong way.
Can we, please, extend this to include animate objects.
Our kitchen door handle is a prick. I'm the perfect height to allow it to catch perfectly into my pocket as I walk past, putting me into an immediate hand break turn to the left... Usually whilst carrying a drink or plate full of food.
It's a bastard and it knows it.
Also door handles, vicious little *******s. So many trousers with pockets or belt loops ripped.
I missed that, I assumed it was only me that had this issue. 😁
Car keys… See above.
AirTag or Chipolo tracker - I no longer lose mine. Tile trackers are useless, avoid.
Bosch oven alarms. Great oven. The timer alarm is quieter than a corpse.
There is no way of adjusting it. Is it because there's some legislation in Germany about damaging your neighbour's hearing or something?
In contrast the old De Longhi oven had a whole range of different tones and volumes ... assuming you could work out how to adjust it.
OK, new one. I’m at my sister’s house at the moment. A strange beeping noise from the other room, I thought one of the kids might have left some sort of game on. That annoying beeping you get in really shit birthday cards.
Nope. It was the washing machine playing a self- congratulatory symphony for actually doing the one job it’s designed for. Smug ****.
Having just moved into a house with considerably more electric beepery than we're used to, there's one intermittent beep that we keep hearing and we don't know what it is. It sounds like a smoke alarm with a low battery... but they're all hard-wired. It sounds like it's coming from the dishwasher ... but there's no code, it's working fine and according the manual it doesn't make occasional beeps. Gaaahhhhh!!!
And drywall anchors. Well that's a great way of ****ing up a nicely plastered and painted wall! Follow the instructions - horrible mess.
US plugs on the other hand… A sure fire way to spend ages in a hotel room trying to get your adapter+plug to stay seated well enough to work without falling out if you go to close to it or look at it in the wrong way.
Australian plugs have managed to come up with a standard pin design ... but a staggering array of shit orientation angles. Consequently you can buy a powerboard for six outlets but only be able to get three plugs into it!
Plus the wiring always enters at 90 degrees to the wall so they accidentally get pulled out with minimal force.
Bosch oven alarms. Great oven. The timer alarm is quieter than a corpse.
we’ve got two Bosch ovens, different models but from the same series. One has a perfectly normal timer alarm, loud-ish and goes on for at least 30 seconds (probably longer) until cancelled.
The second oven…, 3 very quiet, solitary beeps. That’s it. Can’t see a way of adjusting it either!
I use the smoke alarm as our oven timer.
Pawl springs, the coil type
The Crash avoidance warning on our Focus , thing loses it’s shit when there’s no chance of me hitting anything 🙄Trouble is an alarm goes off without warning that instinctively makes you panic for nothing
My Alfa has one. I have a very steep section of driveway... sometimes that sets it off because it thinks you're going to crash into the ground! It also does this with the ramp out of the car park at work. In both situations it's completely random, so not only does it scare the shit out of me but the anticipation of it happening is actually worse. Like the tap that sometimes gives me a static shock.
I return from other dimensions to find STWF forum convo, on vacuum cleaners??
Not like the gud O'le dayzs then!.....
I’d say it’s a Morphy Richards but I’m not sure as all the decals have worn off.
Ours was £2.70 from a charity shop a decade ago. Never puts a foot wrong. Has a lever for raising the toast so you can check it. Only sign of aging is the labels on the buttons wearing off. Easy peasy to use.
The Henry vacuum cleaner (relegated) in the garage.
I've never understood the love for Henrys.
Their USP is that they're indestructible. At work they'll cheerfully suck up brick dust, mud, cat sick, you name it. At home they're a Poundland version of a Hoover Constellation.
Umbrellas. I think they were invented by someone with a hat and coat phobia that had never experienced wind (not that type).
I can't "do" topic ratings as a freeloader, so maccruiskeen 👍 (hand dryers) and blokeuptheroad 👍 (toilet rolls).
I salute you both and giggled stupidly
Is it illegal for me to add the FGF pop up video that I have never and will never watch? It’s like a fly that needs swatting.
reeksy , I asked Mark about it , you can turn it off in your preferences, who knew ?
The top of door frames "header" and the remote for Keff lsx speakers, utter prices.
There's a lo of ire for toasters in this thread. With the rise of AI just be careful what you wish for...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LRq_SAuQDec&pp=ygUOdGFsa2llIHRvYXN0ZXI%3D
the little classifieds board
Ahh the nostalgia. The little classified board in the window of the village new agents where I grew up is what I used to browse before the internet. It's where you could find out what things strangers had bought and then been disappointed by. Went back there after 35 years recently and the little notice board it still there.
We also had a small council tip behind the village hall - its where you could see the items you'd read about on the notice board a few weeks later.
Umbrellas. I think they were invented by someone with a hat and coat phobia that had never experienced wind (not that type).
I think they were invented by someone who harboured fantasies about stabbing strangers in the eye. I think if they didn't already exist and you invented them there would be no way you could actually get them to market now- a ring of sharp points that you wave around at face height. Insane.
The undercurrent of seething anger at substandard design should be an entry into the DSM.
Are you suggesting that the British plug is bad design?
Perhaps the problem is they're an excellent design (they're a perfect case study for the real 'Murphy's Law')* and that they are just really smug about it.
* Not 'anything that can go wrong will go wrong' but more 'if theres more than one way you can use something and one of them ends in catastrophe the it wall happen so design that catastrophe out'. Fascinating story if you've never read it of Murphy accidentally putting a test pilot in a comma but failing to get a reading of the G-Forces involved - the pilot was therefore 'strained in vain' because it was possible to fit the sensors back to front. The point of the experiment was to discover what levels of G force people could survive and accidentally creating a perfectly near-fatal amount of G they had no data on what that actually was. The catastrophe wasn't almost unintentionally killing a guy it was that they learned nothing from it. Murphy's pronouncement was that that it design terms should simply be impossible to fit the sensor the wrong way round.
My Indesit induction hob is a prick. It lets me turn it on, but refuses to acknowledge my attempts to turn any of the rings on because I'm pressing too hard/too softly or my fingers are too wet/too dry/not my wife's.
Then once cooking has finally been achieved, it waits for a drip of water to land somewhere near the controls and puts on a big show of "accidentally" turning all the rings up, or down, or if it's feeling really cantankerous, to the automatic functions that no-one ever uses or understands, bleeping a lot, and finally going into locked mode and refusing to respond to unlocking.
Prick. It's going to get a saucepan in the face one day.
I have to confess to a bit of a Basil Fawlty moment caused by an inanimate object years ago. I was going to a posh do. Black tie. We were going to be staying overnight and shortly before we packed the car to leave, I decided my dress shirt needed an iron, even though it probably didn't. All was going well until the steam iron gave an asthmatic wheezy cough - and threw up a load of grubby water and limescale through the steam holes. All over the front of my pristine white shirt. I took it into the garage, put it on the concrete floor and bashed the shit out of it with a hammer for a good minute or so, whilst informing it colourfully of it's inadequacies and my disappointment in it. Not proud.
I like this thread, it's like a support group 😁
I too have a smug prick washing machine that plays an 'uplifting' tune every time its completed its one and only task. Beeping would have been fine, I don't need to listen to a 1990's ring tone for the next five minutes.
Door handles can **** the **** off too 😡
I'd like to add Google maps sat nav woman, Christ she's a nag, I don't need to hear the same direction three times in a row..
"At the next roundabout take the 3rd exit"....
"At the roundabout take the 3rd exit"...I know! You told me 5 seconds ago!
Drives onto the roundabout
"take the 3rd exit" **** off!!
I then miss the 3rd exit because I've lost my shit
"Continue around the roundabout and take the 3rd exit"
☹️
Oh yes Bosch ovens. What is the point in that alarm anyway?
"blip...blip...blip" for about 20 seconds, just about the right volume to be inaudible over any other loud noise, say if you're washing up with the tap running on the other side of the room.
I have to confess to a bit of a Basil Fawlty moment caused by an inanimate object years ago.
Similar. In my case it was a lawn 'mower', whose sole purpose in life was to make grass shorter. Nope, too difficult. It was best at making grass more tangled, and also muddy at the same time. Utter B'stard.
Suffice to say that it lost against a sledge hammer one afternoon.
My Indesit induction hob is a prick
All induction hobs are utter pricks. On the rare occasions you can actually turn them on/off as required, there's a micro gap in the settings between "barely warm" and "thermonuclear explosion".
Setting 7: nothing
Setting 8: boiling water exploding out of the pan and all over the hob.
At which point the hob will decide it needs to beep every 4 seconds to tell you that it's wet and can no longer function. It then requires the oven equivalent of a luxury valet before it will decide that it's sufficiently dry to once again burn pans to a crisp.
Cacti.
Just pricks - thats all they are
My Indesit induction hob is a prick. It lets me turn it on, but refuses to acknowledge my attempts to turn any of the rings on because I’m pressing too hard/too softly or my fingers are too wet/too dry/not my wife’s.
Is "Indesit induction hob" a euphemism?
I’d like to add Google maps sat nav woman, Christ she’s a nag,
You know you can turn that off? There's three settings: naggy cow, 'boing' and silent.
there’s one intermittent beep that we keep hearing and we don’t know what it is.
I used to work in a tech lab. We had our own little server room segregated from the main corporate network.
We started hearing beeps at random. This in itself wasn't uncommon, the lab was built from the rest of the building's cast-off hardware so (say) the UPS shitting itself was pretty much expected. I'd hear the alarm, go into the back, and it'd stop. Back into the main office and it'd start again. It was toying with me.
This went on for months. It got to a point, I had ladders out and half of the suspended ceiling in bits. I'd hear a beep, sprint into the back room like a man posessed and stuff my head into the plenum to try and echolocate where the hell it was coming from.
Finally one day, I got to the bottom of it. Sound carries, it was a ****ing delivery lorry reversing outside.
Prick.
At which point the hob will decide it needs to beep every 4 seconds to tell you that it’s wet and can no longer function. It then requires the oven equivalent of a luxury valet before it will decide that it’s sufficiently dry to once again burn pans to a crisp.
I hear you. I feel like some kind of slave whose some reason for existing is to maintain the utmost cleanliness around the controls... A drip of condensation from a pan lid? I'm sorry your Highness, allow me to reflexively grab the tea towel and dry that for you instantly... Not quick enough? No, you're right sir, I must be sentenced to 50 bleeps and then return to the beginning of my cooking.
Thing is, it actually does the cooking bit reasonably well, it's just the controls. But the halogen hob in our last rental house cooked about as well as any other halogen hob (terribly) but the controls were tolerant of minor spills, so the technology is there. Just put them in the same bloody product!
I'm generally an even-tempered, laid-back person, but I will also admit to having launched inanimate objects at solid walls in anger. Hob should be glad it's sealed to the worktop.
Do hard wired smoke alarms not still have battery backup? I’ve definitely replaced batteries in irritatingly beeping hard wired smoke alarms before.
Yup.
You know you can turn that off? There’s three settings: naggy cow, ‘boing’ and silent.
Ooohh! Thanks for that.
rushes off to google....
Well, that took a bit of finding. I shall try alerts only, I just want her to tell me once, that would be lovely.
Watch me miss every turning next time I use it, I'll be able to feel her judgement every time she has to recalculate the route 🙁
Inanimate object which are pricks?
Tories? All politicians tbh.
Good call on the jugs, we've got one, it's useless, well, unless the idea is to tip most of the contents onto the table.
'Easy open' bacon packets, Ha! they even have a little pull tab to lure you in. Do they ever work? do they ****, they're ****ing useless, the ****ing ****s. ****!
Can I add Microsoft authenticator to the list ...
An absolutely utter bag of sour pills
Coffee tables. Positioned perfectly for maximum shin damage, collect random crap, never actually any clear space on them for your coffee.
ive made my own- from bits of old kitchen worktop & legs from etsy and is height perfect for a beer next to the sofa & the key bit is that ive put an integrated bottle opener underneath the corner of both, on reflection more of a beer table than a coffee table
Oral-B iO toothbrush.
It actually seems to do a good job of tooth brushing. My hygienist attested to that. However it’s a prick. It’s forever dying of surprise flat battery mid-brush, but its wilfully misleading charge state is only flashed up for half a second just as any sane person would be spitting used toothpaste. I hate it for being such a dickhead while also serving its actual purpose quite well.
‘Easy open’ bacon packets, Ha! they even have a little pull tab to lure you in.
"Peel here." When the glue is stronger than the film. Prick.
we rebuilt the house a while back and got a pack of white goods in the bargain. We thought it would make sense to use the new items, what a mistake...
Gas hob that now moans after cooking even if everything is switched off. It also has a timer that goes nuts if you drop any moisture on it.
Extractor fan that makes more noise than any I have owned, even on its lowest setting you have to shout at each other
Dishwasher that nothing can stand up in the top tray so we have broken so many glasses I have lost count
Washing machine (not from this package but at the same time, and thankfully went bang a year ago) that will not spin if you put more than two towels in or less than a full load. Play a 15 minute piece of ginggly music at the end of a messed up cycle. If you need to stop it to add that dropped sock I think it knows you are waiting so makes you wait for 15 minutes to open the door, and if you tug on the door it makes you wait longer
We have a mechanical door bell. Think Addams Family.
Pull the big handle and a chord, that goes through the exterior wall and round a series of pulleys, moves a spiral spring with a bell on it.
1. It isn't loud enough for anyone in the house to actually hear.
2. When the string snaps you have to dismantle it all and re-thread it whilst working against the tension of the spring. This involves tying a knot one handed whilst up a ladder with a screw driver clamped between your teeth.
I hate our doorbell.
If there is one lesson that everybody can take away from this it is never EVER by a house off middle aged Goths.
You know you can turn that off? There’s three settings: naggy cow, ‘boing’ and silent.
But I don't want some woman booing me just because I won't do a u-turn.
Last thing I beat to death was one of my twin boys travel cot's. £80 one you could put up but not down, it would take hours. So one day I kicked the **** out of it. The other £30 from Asda, looked the same but worked.
"peel here" ham packets in Switzerland you wont be surprised to hear that work
That thing about the crash detection system in cars has reminded me. Our Skoda has some sort of system that integrates the parking sensors and longer-range adaptive cruise control, and can alert us if it thinks we're going to hit something while we're driving.
Every now and then, when driving at around 20mph, this will trigger at the front of the car - and then, a moment later at the back of the car. When there's clearly nothing there.
The first couple of times it did it, it properly shook me. It's now happened enough times that my son will remark "have we just driven through another ghost?"
Last thing I beat to death was one of my twin boys travel cot’s.
never been so relieved when I reached the end of a sentence 🙂
It did start poorly, then got considerably worse 😂
My Transit van has a warning beep for engine-killing problems like low oil, brake fluid etc. And when it's cold. So you can be driving along the motorway and it will suddenly startle you to let you know it's cold outside. My grandson loves the way it makes me swear on our way to footie matches on Saturday mornings and has taken to joining in my diatribes.
I hardly dare mention hose pipes they put me in such a mood. In fact I'm not going to describe how angry they make me because it will spoil the rest of my day.
Autocorrect which you don't realise is on. In typing this post it has decided that when I type startle I meant to type start, and swear becomes sweat. **** right off, I know what I mean!
Every now and then, when driving at around 20mph, this will trigger at the front of the car – and then, a moment later at the back of the car. When there’s clearly nothing there.
Leaves and debris blowing up off the road will sometimes trigger them. As will clouds of spray, the sort where an oncoming lorry blasts the entire car with a wall of spray.
Everyone going on about "self-driving cars will soon be here, we'll all just be able to call up a robot car on an app..."
No you won't, the stupid thing will have got itself stuck in some kind of self-parking / collision alert loop or got so confused over trying to read conflicting speed limit signs that it'll just stop.
Somewhere there's a whole other thread about insane / dangerous / stupid driving aids in modern cars.
See through plastic blister packs containing potentially useful, yet inaccessible, scissors.
I hardly dare mention hose pipes they put me in such a mood. In fact I’m not going to describe how angry they make me because it will spoil the rest of my day.
Hozelock fittings? Hateful, brittle, leaky yellow bastards that never last a year without failing.
I hate our doorbell.
Sounds a right PITA, but it begs the question, why don't you remove it and fit a push button one?
The internet. Everything I try to do ends in a emotionally churned sweary wormhole. I took days to recover from an incident where I needed to log in to an account and couldn't get past the login stage. I have just tried to turn ads off on this site by taking the advice above to go to my profile and turn them off in preferences. Got my profile ok... can't find preferences! I realise this is standard old person and the internet stuff but it's becoming increasingly the case that I am excluded from day to day activities like parking, shopping, banking etc because I am too much of an old dog to learn new tricks
Has anyone (perhaps @cougar?) shared this thread back with the original one on Mumsnet? I'm sure they'd appreciate what they started several years ago; we've diversified well beyond the dishwashers, washing machines and assorted vacuum cleaners which were the bane of many lives there.
My adaptive cruise control on my car is great except when it would be most useful, like driving in rain, sleet or snow. Then it'll just turn itself off declaring that it can't cope with the current weather (or something along those lines), pretty alarming when your on slight bend on a motorway doing 70mph. First world problem I know but is still anoying.
Chappie dog food.
MrsSC has just bought a tin to stop the dog starving to death before she does the delayed weekly shop.
Set firmly into the tin except it then randomly explodes everywhere as you try and fork it out. FFS,
One of the door handles in my house is a little bit like this:
It has spikes on the end of the handle to make it super uncomfy to hold, and give it additional clothes snagging abilities.
I keep meaning to buy new handles, but it's one of those things that I always forget about, that is until next time I have to touch it, and swear at it.