Monday, July 5, 2010

I need instructions for these instructions

Consumer items which are need some assembly should come clearly labeled with levels of difficulty. I am envisioning a color coded system with green being your run-of-the-mill IKEA bedframe, yellow being a home-entertainment set and red being NASA level space-ship building. I tried to put together a running stroller which when you buy from Amazon you would assume could be put together fairly easily as there is nothing in the instructions which mentions anything about needing a degree in mechanical engineering.

No I'm a 34 year old college educated guy who has put together a ton of things (granted most of them of the IKEA variety) but when you start looking over directions and realize you need a second set to decipher the first set, it's going to be a long day. These directions may as well asked you to build the item from scratch because this humongous box had more pieces than a LEGO set and a 10 page instruction manuel
As if the loose pieces and the War and Peace instruction manual isn't intimidating enough, every square inch of free space in the manuel is plastered with warnings saying things like "failure to properly adjust the quick release mechanism cam result in serious injury or death".
Nothing makes you feel less comfortable than knowing the health of your child is dependent on you decipher the code in an instruction manuel which could double as a may to find the Holy Grail.

Examples on page 5

-Move the quick release cam lever so it curves away from the wheel (fig 9.2).
-Insert the wheel between the fork blades so that the axle seats firmly at the top of the tips of the fork dropouts.
-Holding the quick release cam level in the open position with your right hand as shown in figure 11.1 tighten the tension adjusting nut with you left hand until it is finger tight against the fork dropout.

lit's as if I picked up the directions for building a space-ship not a consumer item but it gets better. Long gone are the instructions like push the part clearly labeled A into the slot clearly labeled B now you have to know the difference between a stump axle and a cam shaft.

But it gets better

- while pushing the wheel firmly to the top of the slots in the fork dropout, and at the same time centering the wheel rim in the fork, move the quick release cam level upwards and swing into the FULLY CLOSED position (fig 9 & 12). The lever should now be parallel to the fork blade and curved horizontally towards the wheel.

At the this point I am ready to take a hammer to the entire thing but then you get the real kicker

-to apply enough clamping force, you should wrap your fingers around the fork blade for leverage, and the quick release cam lever should leave a clear imprint in the palm of your hand

WHAT???? You want me to press so hard that I have 'Ironman Stroller permanently tattooed onto my palm? In all this technical mumbo-jumbo and warnings of child death the entire thing comes down to whether you can clearly see an imprint??

There is a reason people don't assemble their own cars, because if there is this much fear of bodily harm nobody would be driving anywhere above 10mph.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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