Why are plastic containers so hard to open? It’s almost as if they are meant to be a pain. You know the kind of packaging that potato chips come in? The bag is a rectangle with both ends sealed off. It is a sheet of plastic wrapped around with the edge glued shut. Those bags are pretty thin, but the same packaging style is used to package many other products in thicker plastic. Plastic that is really hard to open by hand. One day I was opening a bag of pasta in one of those and eventually the plastic ripped open and half the pasta poured out on the kitchen counter. Another tough one is the kind of goods that come in plastic shaped after the product. That plastic is 2-3mm thick and without a pair of solid scissors, you can only dream of opening it.

Convenient for the manufacturer apparently, quite a pain for the consumer.