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YSaC, Vol. LXXI

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drmk

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Lot of Scissors – $18

This lot of scissors contains 75 pairs of fiscar, academic and others. What a great deal!!! Cash only, pick-up only. Sold as-is. Contact if necessary.

That is, in fact, a lot of scissors. The title is correct, both literally and figuratively.

Let’s leave aside the question of “Why would anyone need that many scissors?” You never know when you’re going to have a scissor-related emergency, and having 75 pairs of scissors can help avert many a crisis.

Personally, I’m more amused at the great care and detail in the arrangement of the display of the lot of scissors. These scissors either belong to Martha Stewart, or the person’s a bit OCD. (Actually, those two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, now that I think about it.)

However, they weren’t good enough. The first thing I noticed when I saw the picture was that they didn’t maintain a pattern in the two single lines of scissors at the bottom. C’mon, folks: do the scissors on the top line face left or right? And are the scissors on the bottom line supposed to be placed opposite them, or casually in between? The blue scissors sort of stuck in there at the bottom ruin the whole thing for me. It’s all wrong. I can’t possibly buy these scissors, displayed so asymmetrically like that. My scissor-related emergencies will continue unabated. I need a hug.

Comments

24 responses to “YSaC, Vol. LXXI”

  1. jess Avatar
    jess

    i think this one deserves a pass….fairly normal. maybe it is a teacher…

  2. Pianodan Avatar
    Pianodan

    So what you’re saying is that the problem is NOT that she’s OCD… It’s that she’s not OCD enough.

  3. drmk Avatar
    drmk

    Precisely. If you’re gonna OCD it, OCD it right.

  4. Crystal Avatar
    Crystal

    yeah this just looks like a retiring elementary school teacher trying to sell all the scissors she has bought for her classroom…. not that strange really.

  5. drmk Avatar
    drmk

    If it’s a retiring teacher, wouldn’t she leave the scissors for the next teacher? And 75 pairs? That would be like 3 pairs of scissors per student. And wouldn’t they be safety scissors?

    Anyway, as mentioned above, I’m more amused at the attempt at OCD in the displaying of the scissors.

    They can’t all be winners, I guess.

  6. Crystal Avatar
    Crystal

    no she wouldn’t necessarily leave it for the next teacher. Most teacher buy supplies for their class with their OWN money. So they keep them when they move from class to class/school to school. This person is probably trying to sell them to get some of their money back since teachers don’t make much money anyway. they wouldn’t all be safety scissors unless they are for very young children and as far as having so many… I’d guess this is from an elementary school art teacher who teaches all ages of students so they have different kinds of scissors for the different ages.

    1. arallyn Avatar
      arallyn

      I don’t recall being allowed to not use safety scissors until middle school, when we moved straight up to xacto knives (seriously).

      Maybe it was just my school that had the “special” kids at it, though…

  7. drmk Avatar
    drmk

    I think you’re taking it a bit too seriously … I thought it was funny and kind of odd. (And BTW, I’m a teacher.)

    1. NotMyName Avatar
      NotMyName

      I didn’t know you were a teacher. Now, if only I knew what “drmk” stood for…

  8. Crystal Avatar
    Crystal

    Nope not taking it too seriously.. just saying it’s not that strange 😛

  9. Lois Avatar
    Lois

    Crystal clearly does NOT have OCD. Nor does she understand humor very well. I could never buy almost-lined-up-correctly scissors!

  10. drmk Avatar
    drmk

    Thanks, Lois … I was wondering if it really WAS just me.

  11. Enigmatick Avatar
    Enigmatick

    Also, just to nitpick, shouldn’t it be Fiskars, as that’s the actual name of the company that makes them?

  12. drmk Avatar
    drmk

    Yup.

  13. Galadriel Avatar
    Galadriel

    Yes, for a teacher they probably would all be safety scissors…unless she’s completely replacing her supply. (Um. 75 is indeed a bit much, but sadly, not 3 per kid. Not anymore. Not even 2 per kid.)

    Things have gotten bad enough in public schools that in high school biology all we were allowed to use for DISSECTIONS were safety scissors! And that was over a decade ago, certainly before the various well-publicized school attacks. At my school, they were worried about us hurting ourselves, but now schools are also worried about kids hurting each other & the teachers.

    Sigh.

    1. Dete Avatar
      Dete

      My school let us use scalpels for dissection. And it’s not like we were oblivious to the whole Danger in the Schools thing. Our sister school, which we shared a special olympics team with, had a shooting when I was in 8th grade.

      Of course, I’m not entirely certain that my school ever upgraded anything save for our computers. We apparently had enough money in the budget to buy every classroom 10+ new Macs, but not enough to give us a proper stage.

  14. Feera Avatar
    Feera

    The first thing I thought when I saw this entry was, “Hey, my mom would probably buy those.” She’s a first grade teacher.

    So while I definitely think that it’s weird that they were set up so nicely, I don’t think it’s weird for someone to be selling that many kiddie scissors, and I can think of plenty of teachers who would buy them.

    But if it’s NOT a teacher who’s selling them, then yeah, that’s weird.

  15. Dave Avatar
    Dave

    Not to resurrect a dead post, but I laughed harder at the comment section of this post than I did at the sellers failing OCD (and I laughed pretty hard at those scissors). This is an absolutely fantastic blog you have going here. My work day sucks a little less knowing I still have forty or so archive posts left to filter through.

  16. Mrs. Micah Avatar
    Mrs. Micah

    I would never have to buy scissors again. And I want them! But alas this is close on a year old and it’s not meant to be. 🙁

  17. 2Sly4You Avatar
    2Sly4You

    *MY* first thought was–Hey! I want that many scissors! But I have a problem like that. Then you got to ranting about the misalignment and I started giggling and that is not good when you REALLY have to pee. Sorry, TMI, but thanks for the laugh. Maybe I need to get some of those puppy pads if I continue reading this blog, me thinks! ;D

  18. GeeRome Avatar
    GeeRome

    The misalignment of the bottom two rows was the FIRST thing I noticed about the ad. So to those slightly-OCD people out there, I’m right there with you!

    (Is it horrible that I am particularly paranoid about accidental spelling and grammatical errors while posting comments on this blog?)

  19. Badcoladog Avatar
    Badcoladog

    OCD? Mine just kicked in and I had to count all the scissors! (Yes there are 75)

    1. Cled Avatar
      Cled

      Thank you for doing that so I didn’t have to.

  20. Cled Avatar
    Cled

    Hokaaay…

    First, the colors are entirely too random. I need them to be arranged in rainbow hue order or darkest to lightest or whatever in each and every row.

    Second, some of them have that little tail thingy sticking up to the right, and others have it sticking up to left. Unacceptable. Let’s all face the same way, please.

    Third, the lines are wavy. They need to be aligned so that either the tips or the handles are at the same level in each half-row. (For our purposes, a “half-row” will be defined as all the upward pointing or downward pointing scissors in each visual row.)

    Fourth, the row of horizontally placed scissors at the bottom consists of 12 scissors, but they are arranged in five pairs and two singles. Must try harder.

    Fifth and finally, I would totally buy this. I have scissors in every room of my house because you wouldn’t want to cut paper with your embroidery scissors or cut up a chicken with paper scissors or go out to the garden to cut fresh herbs with your hair scissors or…

    (My OCD can beat up your OCD.)

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