Excessive Functionality, or Hell’s Soundtrack
If there is such a thing as hell, I’m 90% sure that most of my appliances would live in it. Not to supply people with fresh laundry or microwaved burritos, but to annoy people with their constant beeping. I’m not sure what appliance designers are thinking when they build automatic beeps into things, except that perhaps they believe they are being helpful. But they really aren’t. My microwave beeps 3 times every 30 seconds or so if you leave something in it after it is done cooking. My clothes dryer beeps 3 times every 30 seconds when the clothes are about to be dry. (Not when they are actually dry.) The weird thing about both of these beeping functions is that they are pretty much superfluous, because both the microwave and the dryer are loud enough on their own that you can hear them stop. So what’s the point of the beeping? Both of these appliances are valuable in part because you can *do other stuff* while they are working. But there’s no real drawback to forgetting stuff in the microwave or the dryer, really. So your burrito gets cold and you have to heat it up again. So your clothes get a little wrinkly if you don’t take them out immediately. Who really cares? You can just heat it up/dry it a little longer. Not a big deal. In the lower-archy of hell’s soundtrack, though, I’d probably give the absolute lowest spot to that sound that Microsoft Windows used to play when you’d do something wrong. It kind of sounded like a cat stepping on a piano, but it was called “chord.” Probably the most annoying beep in history. Why can’t any of these beeping noises be pleasant in some way rather than making me want to tear my hair out?
