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When is a good thing too much? |
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| Talk,
julie miller,
02:00:00,
07 May 2001 | |
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Decisions Decisions
This weekend, my first in Brighton I decided to check out the local Supermarket or ‘Superstore’ as the directional road signage would have it. And my God when I finally turned the corner into the Sainsburys car park it certainly lived up to its name - this is one mother of a supermarket.
I then spent so long trying to find the organic range (as you do) that it was almost lunchtime before I reached the end of the cheese aisle. I’m all for choice but please, do we really need so much of it? No wonder we feel stressed, I counted 8 different types of tinned tomatoes: whole, chopped, with olive oil, with basil, with basil and olive oil, economy, organic, and regular. What's going on? even the mayonnaise has been tampered with - ‘with garlic’ ‘with added herbs’ or my favourite ‘with olive oil; sorry but isn’t that what mayonnaise is made of anyway? Talk about a Nanny State. Next those helpful ‘product marketers’ will be blending and pureeing our food (a la Heinz baby foods) so we won’t have to waste time chewing. Get a life. What’s happened to us? are we as a nation incapable of mixing more than the most basic of ingredience together. No wonder Delia-monosyallabic-Smith’ is selling copies of ‘how to boil and egg and other coma inducing recipes’ faster than the spread of foot and mouth.
Time -saving-pre-cooked-calorie-counted-from-around-the-world foods line the shelves, “so you don’t have to waste time in the kitchen”. Sure.The reason we haven’t got time to waste in the kitchen is 'cos all our time is spent wandering aimlessly along Supermarket aisles wondering which of the 37 versions of Chicken Tonight to choose for tea.
OK, so cooking is not every one’s cup of decaff/assam/Earl Grey and it’s not that the odd pack of convenience foods don’t come in handy sometimes. It’s just that it seems there's nothing manual left for us to do. Cooking it seems is just something that celebraties do on TV, while we peel back the wrappers of our microwave in minutes and watch.
More choice. Less time. Even buying another phone-set (which, lets face it shouldn’t be hard even for the most cerebrally challanged among us) took the best part of a morning. Too many to choose from. No one to ask. When the final un-aided selection had been made, brought and plugged in, no-one at home had a clue how to use it - too many options, too many buttons - too much choice. We spent the rest of the day reading though the 30 page booklet trying to workout how to make a simple phonecall without setting off the answerphone/tannoy/intercom system. Mindblowing. Our free time should be free time. I’ve just read about a new system developed by a phone company which allows workers to be contacted anywhere, any time. They claim workers will now be able to pick up emails, faxes, and voicemails which the hands free phone system will read aloud for you in a commuter generated voice. Nice. “Allowing better use of employee’s down time”
ie while in the car, commuting, or perhaps even on the loo - why waste time wiping when you could be
making high flying decisions instead? Give us a break.
We spend so long making decisions about things that aren’t important that we’re becoming completey out of touch with what we really want. When we do have a spare moment with no decisions to make we won’t know what to do with it. Eventually “Spare Time Consultants” will be all the rage, “don’t waste time thinking - we’ll do it for you.” might be an appropriate strap line.
How many versions of everything do we need?. Products, systems, foodstuffs. Too much already. OK I’m not saying that we should return to the the seventies style of convenience when “Vesta boil in the bag” - was the housewives’ choice. But please. Last week I stood behind a woman in Starbucks and waited longer than is really necessary for a cup of coffee at 8.30am in the morning with a train to catch and 10 emails waiting to be answered, while she and her companion faffed about decideing whether to go for a “tall and skinny”, “full fat with moca” or a “full blow-out Vente” accompanied by one of the 25 syrups on offer. (yes 25!)
Sorry but life’s complicated enough.
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