Modern Day Hell: The saga of the socks

So I bought some socks. Croft & Barrow socks, to be specific. A 4-pack, to be even more specific.

Here’s what one pair looks like. Pretty snazzy, eh?

But that’s what they looked like after I got them unwrapped, detagged, unstickered and unclipped. Doing all of that took me somewhere between 5-10 minutes, which includes the time I went searching for scissors to cut those blasted little plastic thingies, plus cussing time.

First I had to take off a sticker. Then I pulled them off this evil looking thing, which looks like something a Ninja would use:

Then I tore off this cardboard thing:

Then I had to cut off these plastic T thingies (hence the scissors, which, I firmly believe, actively hide on me – either that or my family refuses to put them back in the scissor drawer because they think it’s hysterical when I stomp around the house sputtering.)

The only problem is I couldn’t get the scissors between the socks or under the T without ripping the socks. So I did what every impatient guys does – I yanked that mother apart, rrraaawr!

Which worked. But it also caused the now severed T part to hide inside the socks like a frightened turtle.  Plus it ripped a little hole in one of the socks. (I’m counting on spontaneous inanimate object healing.)

So now I was mad. But I had my socks! Except then I noticed there was another one of those ^%$#@! plastic T things at the OTHER end of the socks. So I repeated the last step, including the yanking and tearing. Because I’m stupid, that’s why.

Then I noticed this thing:

Which turned out to be a little metal clip to hold the top of the socks together. Why they needed to be held together  at all when the little plastic T things had done such a smashing job of it, I don’t know. This clip was new to me, which made me think of MSU, which I believe has a major packaging program, which graduates people yearly who design ever more things like this because, well, because when they gotta do something, right? Frickin’ sadists. (If I have mischaracterized the scope or evil intent of MSU’s program in any way, I apologize. I’m too angry to look up details at the moment. Please understand.)

So I took the damned clip off. Then, getting smart, I looked at the other end of the socks before declaring victory.

Sure enough:

So, fwip, off that went , too.

Then I repeated these steps for the other three pair of socks in the 4-pack.

Then and only then did I declare victory. The socks were mine at last. Whoo-hoo!

Then I put on a pair to see how they felt.

And sure enough, one of the bits of broken T-thing plastic had somehow woven itself into into the weave of one of the socks in the toe area. It took me three minutes of close inspection to find the little bugger and root it out.

Somewhere a packaging engineer is chortling.