A litte bit of insanity

I had a housewarming party last week, and I wanted to post something about it. Unfortunately, what I really want to do requires time and effort so I probably won't have it ready to post till this weekend. So, just to keep people sated for the time being, here is a brief post on a totally unrelated topic.

Fig. 1: The most inexpensive glass cleaner in Switzerland

I bought the bottle of glass cleaner pictured above at Migros. It is generic brand and it was the cheapest thing I could find (I think it was about 4 CHF for that tiny bottle). If you look at the little label on the top of the bottle, it informs you that the spray works equally well rightside-up and upside-down.

Why does a bottle of window cleaner need to spray while it is upside down? Further, why is this particular bit of advanced technology available in the cheapest store-brand bottle? Why couldn't I have gotten a cheaper product that only works when you hold it upright? These are questions for which there are no answers. Somewhere, deep in the heart of Switzerland -- underground, probably -- there is a team of product designers who decided that a bottle of window cleaner would not be profitable on the Swiss market unless it had a highly complicated spraying mechanism that allowed it to work while being held upside-down. How anyone could possibly come to this conclusion, I have no idea.

Of course, what this means is that somewhere in the US, there is a Swiss guy hanging upside down from his curtain rod cursing his shoddy american glass cleaner which has failed him when he needed it most.