Weekend Edition: They Did Miss Warning The User Not To Stick It In Their Mouth
Picked up a cordless “hard surface sweeper” (ie, leaf blower for driveways) the other day. The foldout manual was a reminder of the strange society we live in. Out of about 216 square inches of English instructions, maintenance, and warnings — somewhat more than the equivalent of two 8.5×11 pages — the complete operating instructions are
“Hold the sweeper with one hand as shown in Figure 5 and sweep from side to side with the nozzle several inches above the ground. Slowly advance, keeping the accumulated pile of debris in front of you.”
Most of the rest is written to protect Black & Decker from stupid — but litigious — people:
- “Do not charge appliance in rain or wet conditions”
- “Do not place outlet of sweeper near eyes or ears when operating”
and, of course, the ubiquitous and thus useless
- “Some dust created by this product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer …”
Without the legal payload, they could have printed the operation and maintenance instructions on both sides of an index card. And we all just take this for granted.
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October 9th, 2005 at 6:39 am
“Keep as far away from cocaine as is humanly possible”.
October 9th, 2005 at 8:37 am
“Do not operate in the shower or while driving a moving vehicle.”
October 10th, 2005 at 11:06 am
I didn’t realize that a legal resident could own a leaf blower. Aye, yos mio!
October 10th, 2005 at 1:08 pm
There are other places you should not stick it!
October 10th, 2005 at 1:21 pm
Great. Now you can blow your shit into your neighbor’s yard where it will sit until his gardener comes and blows it back into yours. These leaf-blower wars are going on all over L.A., kicking more foul crap into the air than all of the Hummers and Yukons combined. Get a broom and a dustpan, sweep up your shit and send it to an Inland Empire landfill.