A rose by any other name would smell as sweet

Last week, my coworker started to rant about how certain food products last much longer than they really should. Growing up on a farm, he was used to food spoiling rather quickly, like a carton of milk expiring within a week, or bread molding after a few days. Now, you can have a loaf of bread and after two weeks, it will still show no signs of molding. Makes you wonder what kind of preservatives are really in there.

The conversation then turned to eggs. After complaining about how long they last (and how he throws them out after a week because he gets scared of them, along with his milk and bread), he mentioned how they used to be so much smaller when he was young. And that got me thinking, when I go to the grocery store, I usually buy the extra large eggs. Why? I don't know. I think that's just what I had picked up when I started doing my own grocery shopping and have been getting ever since.

I remember once being in the supermarket and trying to figure out what the difference was between extra large and jumbo - I couldn't figure out which was bigger since both sound pretty big to me. And that was when I noticed the only other size - large.

Why do eggs come in large, extra large, and jumbo? Whatever happened to plain old small, medium, and large? It's like the opposite of how all the clothing and shoe sizes are running big as a marketing ploy to make people believe they're smaller than they really are. In the same way, maybe eggs are sized at large, extra large, and jumbo to make people believe they're getting more for their money. Hey, at the very least, you're getting some large eggs, right? Maybe size really does matter.

Door Close

Why do elevators have "door close" buttons when they never work? The only door close button I have ever found to work is in my current apartment building, but otherwise, these buttons seem to be a waste of space and only serve to trick people into thinking that they have some control over the elevator.

Yesterday morning I was happy to get into an empty elevator and was looking forward to having a quick ride up to my desk on the 15th floor. I pressed 15, hit the door close button, and stepped back to wait for my departure. Well, I waited. And then I waited some more. I hit door close again and nothing happened.

Then, after what felt like a minute of waiting, just as the doors made a creaking sound and began to close, someone jumped into my elevator and made the doors jolt wide open again. She pressed the button for her floor (of course, it was lower than mine) and stood back to wait for our departure. It must have reset the elevator because it was nearly another minute before the doors started to close again. And just as they began to close, another person jolted the doors open and hopped into my elevator.

After that, a stream of people entered my elevator and once it was full, the elevator finally decided to shut its doors and begin on its merry way. Now that the elevator was packed full of people, it stopped at nearly every floor below mine and when I finally made it to the 15th floor, I found myself the lone person in the elevator. Once again, first in, last out, and all at the hands of a taunting door close button.

Door close button, what is your purpose in life? Why do you exist and tease me so?