I love fruit. But lately my daily dose has been a bit less enjoyable lately. And it’s all to do with labels.
Some great marketing executive came up with the idea that brand could be enhanced if each piece of fruit was individually labelled. So now the supermarket is full of fruit with it’s own little label saying “Pick me! Pick me!” As I inspect the apples and gently squeeze plums I become quite breathless with the beauty of the labels – little ovoids of colour with numbers and valuable information. It’s just a shame that my eyesight isn’t great, so my choices are a little blurred…lovely contrasting colours though.
Today’s lunchtime fruit consisted of two ripe, luscious plums. I was looking forward to them – until I attacked the labels that is. Particularly sticky labels, in fact, hanging on for grim life labels designed to give me more time to enjoy one last look at the branding. So I could tell whether they came from NZ or USA. Just as well they didn’t come from Al Jumahiriyah al Arabiyah al Libiyah ash Shabiyah al Ishtirakiyah al Uzma because there would have been no hope of fitting all that on the label (and I probably wouldn’t want plums from there anyway). Anyway, I am dexterous so I was able to remove each label in only seven pieces per fruit. I suggest that those of you who wish to become top rate surgeons add plum label peeling to your daily routine – those intricate movements are sure to improve your operating skills even better than gaming. I’m sure there’s a piece of research in there somewhere…
As I bit into the plums I pondered about this whole labelling fruit business. Did they decide that, due to the recession, they would employ people to stick labels on the fruit? New jobs created in the printing industry and all those workers standing in an assembly line labelling the fruit as it rolled past on the conveyor belt? Oops, I forgot that we have moved on since those days. A machine will have been designed to label the fruit as it came past, no humans needed. It would have taken a lot of clever thinking to develop a machine to do this, but once done the machines could be sold to all those other sticker loving fruit producers. Business could be looking up, I wonder if you can buy shares in fruit sticker machine making companies?
With the number of unemployed still on the rise there are all sorts of business opportunities in this fruit labelling business. Imagine coming home and announcing that you had just landed a plum job. The family would be pleased for you. You could explain how you operated the flash machine that stuck the labels on fruit – “Hello, I’m Fred. I’m a plum machine operator.”
Perhaps there is a whole new Guiness Book of Records section untapped – how many pieces can you rip from one small plum label? How many plum labels can you take off in 1 minute?
Anyway, the labels are now history and the plums eaten. I’m wondering if I should just ignore the labels next time and eat the lot. Would it add to my fibre intake?
Now don’t get me wrong, it is nice to know where your fruit comes from so you can make decisions about buying or boycotting, but couldn’t we just have a nice big sign on the fruit bin that says where the fruit comes from? See I spend a lot of my time thinking for my living, and right now I’m thinking we could do fruit labelling differently. What do you suggest?
