One Good Turn

Our car battery died yesterday. This is fine. It happens, and we are lucky that it happened in a good place - a movie parking lot. Someone gave us a jump and we were off to the local, friendly Wal-Mart for a replacement. I thought, "This is going to take half an hour." It took five minutes to get the right battery (only thirty dollars) and a cheap pair of pliers for the nuts. Pop the hood and remove nut number one on the bracket holding the dead battery in. Only two nuts to go and then we can go home and eat boiled turkey necks and pig's feet! But wait a minute. Those silly little nuts are really pretty buried. And they are tight. And my hands are now blistered and burned. And bleeding. And it's an hour later. And it's raining. And both nuts are little less hexagonal and a little more round. And the car still won't start. And it's getting dark now.

Luckily a good samaritan saw us in the parking lot. Or heard me scream, maybe. Anyway he went home ("just around the corner") and brought back a big ratchet set and we were able to work out that the nuts were 8mm and even with the ratchet very difficult to remove. But we did it, and the car started up fine with the new battery. We were happy if a bit greasy and stained and frustrated. With all the grease and blood on my hands and face and shirt you'd think that I replaced the whole engine in that car.

In conclusion - engineers, as intelligent as you might be and as good a functioning design as you might make, don't be dumb. Unless your product is never going to need any part replacement you need to design in PEOPLE. If I need to remove the steering column to get to the spare tire it's not good design. In my case, a simple solution would have saved you reading this - wingnuts.