What does our watch battery misadventure say about our ‘consumeristic’ society?

Time today for a big rant about a little thing -- finding a watch battery. Are my wife and I the only people who keep wristwatches running long enough to need new batteries? I think not, but maybe that's true.

We both appreciate having solid, functional watches with digital displays. Many years ago, when digital watches were first invented (yes, we really ARE that old), they were the rage. Everyone wanted one. They could be read conveniently at a glance, and from the start they seemed more accurate and they actually had batteries -- they needed no winding!

Not too many years ago, the fashion police decreed everyone was going to return to analog watch displays. Soon, the only people who wanted digital watches were long distance runners, speed walkers, and my wife and I.

Okay, I'll shorten this story at this point. MOST women's digital watches these days are less than elegant, looking instead as though they belong around the wrists of lady wrestlers or weightlifters. She has one that's reliable and still looks "womanly" -- it's not one of those high-priced luxury watches, but it looks nicer than a "sports" watch. And we spent an entire evening driving around this miserable little city where we live looking for a watch battery when her old battery died. We tried the obvious big-box department stores. No luck.

We were headed home after concluding that she had simply kept the watch too many years and was the victim of "planned obsolescence consumerism by watch manufacturers."

On a whim, we stopped at a place called "The Battery Store" -- which we thought probably had mostly car batteries, boat batteries, etc.

They had a huge rack of every sort of watch battery you could imagine. They found one instantly that fit her older watch, installed it within a minute, and we were on our way back home.

I'm not sure what such a quest tells us about the consumer society in which we live. Perhaps it says we face throwing away or otherwise replacing a good watch just because the stores don't expect us to keep it around long enough to need a new battery? Or perhaps we just were unlucky with her particular model of watch?

It does tell me I know where to look now the next time I need a battery -- any battery!
[tags]wristwatches, wristwatch battery, consumerism, just a guy who reads the papers[/tags]

April 24, 2008 | Filed Under Cultural News, Shopping News