Potato Chip Bag Destroyers

By Badagnani [CC-BY-3.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

It is only fair that I acknowledge that the initial inspiration for this blog was what I would call an "improper handling of packaging" incident, in which someone displayed an inability to properly open a packaged food item.  That incident became the lighthouse which my ship of annoyance attempted to sail away from, though I kept running into lighthouses, like I was in the middle of a constellation.  So, without paying any more particular attention to that incident, I will talk about this equally annoying packaging destruction.

Let me acknowledge one thing first: potato chip packages are sometimes annoying to open.  The bag of Kettle chips with this post is amazingly neatly opened, with some chips nicely arranged in a bowl.  But let's not kid ourselves, Kettle chips are perhaps one of the more annoying bags to open - whether it is the industrial-strength glue they use to seal the bags shut or the fact that the "tear here" notch is vertical, encouraging you to tear down the bag instead of across.  Both are nonsensical.  This photographer managed to get a perfectly opened bag (I'm guessing scissors were heavily involved) and even serve chips in a personal-sized bowl, like anyone ever takes their portion control of potato chips that seriously (because if they did, that would be seriously annoying).

Only slightly more annoying than the potato chip bags themselves are people that open them improperly. You know who I am talking about and it is not the person who accidentally rips the bag more than they intended or in a different direction than they planned.  No, that person is just incapable of following their true intentions.  I am talking about the person that willfully destroys the bag entirely because they think this is the right thing to do.

I've seen it only on occasion with a full-size bag, but bag destroyers almost universally will mutilate the single serving potato chip bags.  For the most part, there are two methods - for illustrative purposes, let's call it the crazy method and the insane psycho crazy method:

• The Crazy Method - This individual methodically (like a serial killer) separates the bag at the top, bottom, and back seams, creating a flattened version of the bag that once was, usually shiny-inside facing up, and eats the chips off of it.
• The Insane Psych Crazy Method - To hell with seams.  They were meant to hold back the type of animalistic violent opening that this person craves.  The bag is ripped completely asunder by pulling at the top until it tears down each side, creating a long rectangular flattened surface, connected still by the bottom seam.  It gives the opener some sick joy like ripping an alligator's head apart by prying its jaws open until they snap.  Seriously, they are demented.

Why does this annoy me so much?  Well, I don't have to tell you why.  Many many of my annoyances have no rhyme or reason to them, so I won't pretend to justify each.  This one, though, has a couple of base reasons I can identify:

• Practicality - Once the bag has been destroyed, then what?  You certainly won't be storing that last handful of chips in there to stash away.  The bag is now a flat "plate" which is never going to keep the chips from going stale.  Not to mention losing the portability of being able to relocate with your bag of chips.
• Gluttony - OK, so your answer is "I'm going to eat them all" and that's why you destroy the bag.  Still seems excessive.
• Civility - Humans invented seams and "Tear Here" indicators on packages (though sometimes humans, aka the Kettle Chip producers, get the direction of those indicators wrong) to create some level of civil interaction with our food.  We are not lions ripping raw flesh from the inside of a downed gazelle. We are humans and we eat our fried potato root slices from a bag that was manufactured and heat-pressed together for our convenience, so that we can buy them from a convenience store and eat them in the car on the way to lunch.

So stop mutilating the bags, readers. You're better than that.