Ticked off by stickers

Is it just me or is everyone annoyed by the stickers on fruits?

Thanks. I knew I wasn't alone.

I don't have anything against stickers per se. I used to have a collection as a kid. Of fast cars, bikes, fighter jets, super heroes and such else stuck on just about any surface. Besides their "artistic" service, there are the other applications as well - price tags, labels etc. So what drove me against these sticky friends? Things started to go wrong when the fruit folks, particularly the apple guys, at some point between the fruits getting plucked to being stocked on the store shelf, decided to get some critical piece of information attached to their products. Only, their products are edible and the piece of information-bearing sticker isn't. By any stretch of imagination. The sticker bears a number and, in most cases, the picture of a solemn apple for good measure. In theory, the sticker helps charge the customer the right price for the right variety, which is fine with me. Swindling a farmer is the last thing on my mind. But in reality, it happens to be the quickest way to get apple under your fingernails. This glossy piece of inconvenience gets a life of its own when it senses that it is about to be evicted from its fruity perch. The time between when you pick up an apple from the fridge and when you can finally sink your teeth into it could be between 20 minutes, if you possess the dexterity usually demonstrated by neuro-surgeons, to an hour, if you are me. Even if I manage to get it off, there is the lingering doubt about what kind of residue still sits at the former site (never mind that the apple is soaked in pesticide) which prompts a neurotic scrub and the eventual decision to amputate a chunk and consign it to the trash can. I can already see someone accepting the Nobel prize for his work on adhesive toxicity in apples and I don't want to be a statistic. Although I'm not on an apple-a-day regimen, I still end up sending a significant quantity of otherwise edible fruit chunks to the dump in a year. Surely there must be an elegant solution to this. Sigh.

Next in this line of madness are the steel vessel manufacturers who put them at the most inconvenient places. Like the business end of a ladle, for instance, or bang in the middle of the inside of a plate and other such places where the sticker is as useful as an elephant in a kitchen. I don't know if things were this bad traditionally and I'm beginning to notice this only now or if these guys have decided to get creative with pushing their brands only recently. We had christened a steel container as the "J.K dabba" (J.K being the letters on the tenacious sticker that could not be removed at all, passing the tests of multiple washes). These are not informative stickers, mind you. And even the critical wash instruction tags on garments get stitched only on to the insides. Unobtrusively. Now, I'm all for sensible advertisement and disseminating information. I mean, how else do you expect people to know about your wonderful products? But, if these annoying pieces come off easily, I wouldn't be writing this stuff. Instead, the guys over at T.S.K Steel Works (and Apsara Steels) believe that it is not a bad idea to use industrial grade super adhesives to affix these wonderful stickers that cling on to the surface with a wicked force. Along with the price tag that the retailer affixes. You know whats more annoying? People choosing to leave the stickers on and use the vessel. Last week I tasted adhseive flavored cabbage curry.

I've now officially condemned 3 tonnes of utensils as "unusable" and sent them on their way to rebirth in some other form. Probably with a different sticker. I wonder if and when will the folks over at T.S.K Steel Works (and Apsara Steels) realize that people don't exactly flock to buy their particular brands. A ladle is a ladle and as long as it doesn't cut my fingers and doesn't have a sticker at the most inconvenient place, I'm fine with whoever makes it. And if you are keen to spread your name around, stick that darned thing on the handle/outside!

(Image courtesy: http://www.ddbseattle.com/blogs/hillary_miller/)