Litlle things ...

That make life in America easier !

In the last one year, I have come across numerous instances of how little thought processes applied by someone makes life a lot easier in America.
The first one was of course the small instrument to wash dishes. I had always used a brush and soap powder/soap detergent to wash my dishes. (Don't get the impression that I used to cook regularly in India, once in a while that is ) . On the occasional trips home, I had seen my mom using liquid soap. Fare enough, but still the same tech - Dip the brush in liquid & wash. That's the reason why I was amused to see a small instrument with a pipe like container attached to the brush being used in most American kitchens (When they don't use the dishwasher that is). The container was filled with the liquid of course.That was kind of cool to me, as it saved a lot of effort on my side. My first couple of months of Onsite assignment@ home was purely dishwashing, as I had already proved my cooking skills in 2 days. This thing helped in 2 ways to reduce effort. The need to dip brush in liquid repeatedly was eliminated & I got a huge pipe to hold on too.

The next one is from a low cost supermarket chain called 'Aldi'. They have a real nice business model - No carry bags, no heavily branded goods,no credit cards...In all everything that keeps costs low. In fact, lower than Walmart most of the times. Obviously this also means lower number of staff on premises. It's pretty routine to see a single person manning the entire supermarket and still doing everything efficiently. One routine task at big supermarkets in US is to collect back trolleys/shopping carts from the parking lot & get them back to store. Some 'smarter' shops out rightly ban them from parking lots. I was amused at how folks at Aldi got around it. They used a coin operated trolley. The design is quite simple. You have to insert a quarter (25 cents) into a slot on the trolley to get it released from it's stack. The coin stays in the trolley when you shop and when you offload stuff into your car.The catch : the coin will come out of the slot only when you replace the trolley back to where you pulled it out from. The system is very neat and it's a nice sight to see all carts arranged neatly at the store all the time. No human intervention needed. Money works !

Next is the nice method to post and deliver letters/parcels. Right from stamps that you can print straight from the postal dept website on payment through credit card to the nice delivery mechanisms that work..the system is quite appreciable. Most of the letter boxes at homes have a red colored flag that you can raise in case you want to send something out. So posting becomes as simple as putting stuff in your own letter box at home and raising the flag. Yep, in case you haven't guessed, the letter boxes don't have keys.
And in places where they have keys, they have a collection box like we have in India. In apartment complexes they keep some common drop boxes for incoming parcels.In case you get a parcel, they would lock up the parcel in the box and drop the key in your mailbox. You can unlock the box and get your parcel, the key stays put in the lock ! Simple idea !

Such small systems are in place everywhere and believe me they make life a lot easier. I remember one incident at the Airport when my friend reported at the check-in desk only to realise that he didn't bring in something seemingly important - The ticket ! (Now you know why he is my friend !@ ) I can't imagine what would have happened if it was in India, but the lady at the counter said.. 'No problem, we will work a way out'. She asked him if he had any valid photo id. He gave the Driver's license and that did the job. She tracked him out of the list of passengers on the flight and gave him his boarding pass. Now remember that he didn't use the driving license anywhere in the process of booking the ticket. I am not sure if she just checked his name on the card since driving license is good enough identification for anyone in the US. But the system in place is what makes the act foolproof. Each credit card used to book the ticket is linked to an SSN number and every driving license too is linked to the SSN number. I assume the system went deep enough and showed her the authenticity. But even if it didn't..well, it worked !