Over at the other DrC’s blog, I get an honorable mention for helping her wrangle some truly cantankerous plastic packaging, in a post she calls “Shrink Wrap H*ll.” As she notes, the shop vacuum which the battery powers was in an easy-to-open cardboard box, while the battery and charger were in a big, awkward, nearly indestructible plastic thingy (see photo).
The “why” of all this? Shoplifting, plain old theft. The battery is small enough to slip in a pocket or purse, though a mite heavy, and it is expensive enough to be worth stealing.
Small, expensive things tend to be stolen unless bracketed by packaging that makes them too big or awkward to hide. Vendors tend to demand the packaging so they don’t have to keep such items under lock-and-key, accessible only by sales associates.
The absolutely intractable nature of Milwaukee’s packaging, which probably cost several dollars, is evidence they had a serious “walk away” problem. One they went to relatively extreme (and expensive) lengths to solve.
Such are the musings of a retired Business school prof. There is always a bottom-line reason for this sort of seemingly awkward, customer-irritating action, it isn’t done on a whim.
