Leslie Ann Asks: ‘Whatever Happened To No Assembly Required?’

Chances are if you've purchased a product that isn't food and comprised of a single part, you've had to assemble it in some way.  Is it me or is everything today "some assembly required"? I sure miss the days when most things I purchased already came assembled! What happened?!

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There was a time when I was younger and life was much simpler. That was a time in my life when I actually enjoyed diving into a project like assembling purchases but who has time for that now?! Those days are done for me!  I have a busy family life and time is too precious to monkey around with putting together products since I have much better ways to spend my time. So it's not only a time issue for me but I think I can safely say that most directions are terrible, especially with products from non-English speaking countries. Not only are they written very poorly but the pictures displayed during each step typically seem to not match the written directions. There's usually some type of discrepancy which leaves you wondering..."Do I follow the pictures or the written directions?" This is NOT a decision one should ever have to make!

Honestly, at the end of such an endeavor, you feel lucky if the ending result remotely resembles the picture of the product on the box!

Why do manufacturers do this to us?  Ok, so this is not a hard question to answer. We all know the reason is for the company who made the product to save money.  Why spend the money on extra packaging and labor to have items come all put together when you can have the consumer do it?  They even manage to get more money out of us by adding a cost if you want them to assemble it for you.  Sneaky right?

I say bring back products already assembled!  We pay way too much for things to deal with that nonsense of putting it together!