Why can nobody who makes coats sew buttons on competently?
The nice new leather coat I bought only a few weeks ago is losing its buttons at a rate of knots. The first one pinged off on my way to the pub last night, and two or three others already look very precarious. I'm sorely tempted to take them all off, and sew them back on properly.
I would go and be specifically irritated at the shop I bought the coat from, if it weren't for the fact that the last coat I bought had the same problem – the buttons were badly attached and fell off very quickly, but once I sewed them back on myself they've never done it again (and I'm not actually that competent at it!). I'm forced to the conclusion that this is standard practice in the coat-making world, with the consequence that everybody in the world needs to get really good at sewing buttons on coats, except the people who actually make the coats. I'm sure this is the wrong way round.
Thing is, I'd accept that excuse if the coat had cost me fifteen quid. But when they're charging several hundred for a really nice coat, you'd think they could afford to employ one barely competent monkey to make sure the wretched buttons are competently fastened. I mean, I can sew buttons better than that, and I'm the sort of person who has to concentrate hard to avoid accidentally sewing his thumb to things.
Anyway. They could afford to pay one barely competent monkey to sew the buttons on to your coat -- well, it would probably be a small brown child rather than a monkey, but they'd probably still pay them peanuts. Which would at least mean that they had something to eat. The problem is, Mr Coat-Manufacturer wouldn't make such a huge profit if he started paying people when he could get away with using machines. And machines don't do awkward things like demanding time to eat, or sleep. Aren't machines great? Hurrah for the industrial revolution.