We’ve all seen the insurance commercial where a couple has a ant(aunt) problem in their home. In one special scene, one aunt (whose name escapes) reviews the items in the refrigerator and serially declares ‘Expired. Expired. Expired.’
Granted, the image of a fridge full of potentially spoiled food is perhaps an unpleasant look for many people, although controversy rages eternally whether the expiration dates on food are accurate or even meaningful. Even given that, food spoilage is definitely a thing, and best paid attention to lest woe begone befall the consumer of bad food. Moldy bread, lumpy milk, and the like are definitely best avoided.
Would that such circumstances apply only to the items found in the refrigerators or food pantries of America, but such is dramatically not the case. This writer has seen an alarming increase in the number and types of consumer items stamped/printed/sewn/etched/rollmarked/etc with some manner of expiration date, and in many cases the manner of determining these dates is left to the consumer’s imagination.
Some minimal scandal ensued when it became known that one dominant printer manufacturer (sometimes instead referenced as ‘Maker of High Priced Ink’) coded an expiration date into its printer ink cartridges, after which date the cartridge would no longer, you know, print, and would instead helpfully remind the consumer to go out and purchase more, new ink. Long time consumers of such product howled in protest, especially those prone to purchasing said ink at sale prices and thereby ‘stocking up’ only to find said sale-priced ink utterly useless. Of course, the time-honored way to know when it was time for more ink was when the printer started printing blank pages, but that mechanism was apparently woefully inadequate for pumping sales. Enter the expiration date.
Racing (as readers know is near and dear to this writer) finds itself the home of a myriad of expiration dates these days. Time was (warning: Old guy ‘good old days’ rant follows) that we all knew our seat belts/harnesses would stretch in a crash, and after such a event we typically would send the belts to the manufacturer for rewebbing using the existing hardware (steel) parts, and pay a modest fee for said service. At some point, the manufacturers stopped offering that service, insisting that a full, new purchase was required. So be it; racers are rather accustomed to getting the short end, so no surprise there.
Still, every track rule stated that said belts were good for 5 years from the date of manufacture (which had always been sewn into the set of belts), and that was status quo for a number of years. Well, much like the printer ink example, that near-universal rule was apparently woefully inadequate to raise quarterly sales, so now the manufacturers (yes, all of them; how weird is that?) sewed expiration dates into their belts instead of manufactured dates and behold! those dates were only two years out from when they were typically purchased. And every racetrack began recognizing and honoring those dates, so now everybody had to buy new belts every two years, instead of five, even in the absence of any crashing incidents.
Would that the quarterly sales bean counters be satisfied with that but no, now it is typical to buy new racing harnesses with expiration dates some 16 months out, instead of the previously-paltry two years. And this has apparently been successful enough, from a quarterly sales perspective, that the required window nets also have expiration dates sewn into them, barely two years. But, we know where that is going, don’t we. (as an aside, just what are they making these products from that they only ‘last’ less than half as long as their predecessors?)
Fast forward to last week, when there was a task requiring much, much cutting of metal. Fairly straightforward, until the appearance of a expiration date on a….metal cutting wheel. Yup, a device used to cut steel, used by thousands and thousands of people with no regard to the device’s life expectancy, is now stamped with an expiration date. It’s enough to stop one cold, at least for the moment, to ponder the meaning of this sudden appearance. Will it work once mounted in the associated grinder? Is it going to shred to pieces immediately? Will I be reported to the intellectual property police for using an unauthorized cutting wheel?
Bah. I mounted them on the tool and cut the steel anyway. I just hope the expired wheels don’t make me sick.
In no particular order 