The worst I've seen are... leafy-stemmed carrots, or maybe pre-made salad. I think you'd get laughed at here if you walked around with a pre-cut apple, or pre-peeled orange.
My favourite American product I've come across. Imitation process cheese. That's like two steps removed. Maybe it's for vegans?
I'm currently amused if not awed by the preponderance of over-sized, $80,000 trucks. Most of my friends - contractors and tradesmen, generally, use beat-up little pickups (I prefer trailers) to haul equipment and materials. A common sight, where I now live, is the aggressively driven, imposing, giant truck, rarely carrying anything more than a few bags of Trader Joe's groceries. Pulling campers and horse-trailers and boats is understandable, but the streets and highways are clogged by these seeming icons. I guess after years of living in a crowded metropolis, where public transport is essential, it comes as a sort of culture shock. But it seems excessive and unsustainable. Proportionally, the average house seems to be much less a concern than the big rig in the driveway.
I think most voters get in the booth with the intent of voting for the President and wonder, "what's all this other stuff they want me to vote on?" When in reality that "other stuff" is what should've been concentrated on. Instead, they go vote when the Besuty Pagent is over.
She wanted one for years and years. Kids are bigger. Two of them have vehicles. Don't need the minivan anymore. We are middle age now. Got her a big truck. Need it? No. But it is handy for 500 mile road trips to her parents. Still seats all the kids and fits all our junk for a week.
Let me introduce you to 'Merica. Where we do things, not because they make sense, but because we can. And, you know, testosterone and wee-wee size may have something to do with it. Or not. 8)
I realise the UK does have ready-made produce where all you do is chuck it in the microwave for two minutes and then eat it. I lived largely on that stuff when I first got my own place. It's not just "the convenience factor", it's the sense that "convenience" seems to take a much higher significance here. The impression I get is that there are more opportunities to pay a huge premium for someone else to perform a trivial task for you. Family time is more and more difficult to arrange. It's not so much about pushing for more productivity, it seems to be more about pushing for ever more hours even if those hours are less productive. If you can get all the work done in 30 hours per week it generally doesn't help to make that too obvious or you just get loaded up with ever-more work until you really do break under the load. It's also a rather sad irony that the people that on the face of it would gain the most from pre-prepared food are also the ones likely to be least able to afford the extra money for it. And when the work involved is nothing more than peeling an orange it seems pretty sad to buy two peeled oranges for much the same price as a whole box of oranges. It's not like peeling an orange takes very long.
I saw them a couple of times. I forget if it was M&S or Waitrose that sold them. They didn't last very long, stand-up comedians really went to town on those.
Perhaps, it's hard to know whether the relentless push for "more, more more" from bosses drives an increased attempt to be lazy, or people being lazy results in bosses expecting them to work more hours so the work gets done. It's always hard to balance protecting a good worker from a bad boss while also protecting a good boss from a bad worker.
I don't understand it also. Sure got a bunch of lazy people where I work...........perhaps even clueless.
I guess I did not really mean lazy. But trying to save time, or get stuff done quicker to have less work is a major impetus for innovation and change.
I apologize, I was reading on the skim. Sometimes other peoples peeled oranges taste better than our own peeled oranges too. (I grasped the time concept...a little) With oranges, personally, peeling them is the best part (hate the white stuff) because they smell so good. Aromatherapy = Happiness.
I guess a lot depends on what counts as "being lazy". The first proper job I had started out really well but the company chairman had a particular turnover figure in mind and as we approached it he started driving the staff harder and harder. I'd previously found a spreadsheet that proved he lied to me about salary promises and that other analysts were paid 60-70% more than me despite having fewer technical skills even though he promised me that my salary was being bumped up to match theirs. The second-to-last straw was when he announced to me that he had secured a new project for me that would require "lots of hours, and lots of extra hours". (In other words I'd have to work lots of unpaid overtime just to meet his schedule even before factoring in unexpected surprises). The last straw was that the next day the technical director came in to tell me about his new project that would involve "not always leaving at 6pm". Joy of joys, I was about to be given two major projects when neither of them could be done within my normal working hours. So from there on I worked to rule and didn't do a minute of overtime any more. That was also the time I started looking for another job. Was that lazy, or was it just protecting myself from total burnout trying to keep up with impossible deadlines?