Designers

The tops of bottles of cooking oil have been changed recently, in a way which makes it nearly impossible to open them, once the seal has been broken and the bottle has been opened once, without getting oil on one's fingers.

Clearly whoever designed the thing did not put much time in opening them up. Maybe all he or she was interested in was being sure that the things do not leak before they have been opened. Maybe he or she was a graduate from one of our fine art colleges, reduced to earning a living in industry. Not enough money in throwing paint at piles of rubbish, even in our enlightened times.

An irritation of the same sort is to be found on plastic bottles of milk, at least the ones that hold two pints. You take off the green (in our case) screw top lid to find a circular seal stuck to the rim of the bottle which is almost impossible to remove without leaving some of it behind. Most unsightly, not to say unhygienic. And quite hard to remove at all, impossible if one's fingers are wet or greasy.