Here's Your Sign

I'm amazed at the ineptitude of some people. Truly, utterly amazed. And I don't know why I should be, really. I mean, I've spent most of my adult life working as a public service employee. You would think I would be used to meeting incompetent people.

But this really takes the cake. The other night, I was watching tv, and during commercials, there were these ads for those REALLY, INCREDIBLE MADE-FOR-TV items that everyone ABSOLUTELY HAS TO HAVE in order to make their lives better. Like a portable electric can opener, or knives that can go through dry wall, or gloves that can peel potatoes.

Now, I realize it can be difficult (not to mention time-consuming) to peel potatoes well. But Saturday night, I saw an ad for a photo slicer. Basically, all it was was a small paper cutter with tinted plastic that allowed the user to see exactly where the cut was going to go. I realize this can be useful (assuming it actually works), but the people they showed using this tool were using it because they couldn't make the same cut with scissors.

How hard, exactly, can it be to cut a straight line with scissors? In the ad, the people were struggling to cut photographs so they could go into a frame. It's not like they had arthritis, and it's not like they were cutting plain ordinary paper without a design. They appeared to be pefectly capable people. Cutting a photograph. With straight lines. And if worse came to worse, they could always flip the photo over and use a ruler to draw a straight line on the back.

*sigh* As Jeff Foxworthy (or whoever the guy is) would say, "Here's your sign."