on the flip side, i tear open boxes manually because I’m too lazy to go get the scissors/knife
What do you mean “go get?” Just pull it from your pocket.
I mean, everyone’s got a knife… Right?
not since *stares blankly ahead* the incident
Easily opened for sure, but cleanly? I bet not. The knife will be clean and smooth, and satisfying. The cardboard will never see it coming.
Lol … as a kid one of my first jobs was working at a grocery store. I learned early on from older people at the same job how to separate the tape and peel it off as fast as possible. If the box had more than one strip of tape, you just used the pointed edge of anything to snap the tape … a pencil,a pen, a nail, a screw, a clipboard, sometimes just even a fingernail.
As soon as you remove the tape, you cleanly get at everything inside without damaging anything.
I once watched a friend of mine at the same job saying that he knew better and always used an exacto knife. After he ruined several boxes of merchandise, they took away his knife.
How stupid do you have to be to damage the contents of a box when opening it with a knife? Was he just jamming it in anywhere?
Many ex cops work in retail.
You always have to be aware of what might be inside. If it’s a bunch of solid objects, chances are you have some room to use a knife. If what’s inside is big and fluffy and soft, chances are you’re going to do damage.
The friend I talked about nearly got fired because he once ruined several big downy brand new winter jackets because he thought he was an expert with an exacto knife.
Oh God, your comment triggered my PTSD… One of my first jobs I worked at, I had to restock, multiple times a day, a bin with a bunch of items that were very delicate and wrapped in super thin & delicate plastic. But the box they came in was made of super heavy duty cardboard. Like this shit was originally intended to be some kind of bullet proofing material but accidentally got used to make boxes. Even worse though was that each open end of the box was glued shut with enough glue to stick the Titanic back together and still have some left over and then stapled.
I hated those boxes.
This depends entirely on the type of tape it is. There’s plenty of ripstop tech in packing tapes now and adhesives that are stronger than the boxes they’re bound to, both of which make a mess if you try to tear in a straight line.
They make safety openers for that which have the blade shielded.
❗️
Less effort, too
When you carry a hammer, everything is a nail.
Did anybody else ever watch Cutlery Corner with Tom O’Dell? It’d be on at like 2 AM. It’s the only QVC-style shopping channel I ever voluntarily watched. A fair bit.
If your blade tastes cardboard, you need to study more. You should be quickly and cleanly gliding through tape, between the edges of that pulpy/corrugated paper that grips like molasses.
I can’t. The left over tape is too much for me to take.
On the flip side, I always feel like a real poser when I fail to open a box that looked easily openable with my hands so better safe than sorry.
You gotta have generational skills and 10000 hours of training to not scratch the content of said box.
Or a boxcutter that won’t go but so deep. Good ones even have a guide to let you cut around the edges in second for displaying purposes.
Or just start the cut in the long direction and slip the knife between the top and bottom flaps for the sides. Assuming whoever taped it didn’t add more tape perpendicular to the main length, though even then you just need to start a cut for each of them. Tip just needs to barely pierce it.
But where is the honor in that!? /s
No I did not watch 100 hours of EDC videos to find the perfect multitool with a selected high quality components and dozens of functions to just let it sit in my drawer or pocket.
I did all this in fact to use the damn thing!!! Sometimes even more than once a week!
And, which ones would you recommend?
For always fitting in your pocket without being obtrusive, a Victorinox Minichamp Alox with a pocket clip.
recently I have been restricted from knives for… reasons, but tearing apart cardboard boxes like that one edgy warewolf PNG is pretty fun
I laugh . For years I always had crap knives and i use them every day for work and on a farm. Reluctantly baught a TOPS fixed blade , didn’t break the bank but it is a solid utilitarian knife (100% us made) and I can’t believe how well it holds an edge. I have been using it daily and it replaced my razor knife for most jobs.
Cardboard doesn’t stand a chance
Are you callin’ me out, old man???
Anyway, it’s rarely the cardboard that’s a hassle. It’s the damn glued shut bubble mailers, the boxes that are completely shrink wrapped, or have those damn plastic straps around them, or plasic clamshell packaging.
All of those get the chop. The latter often with extreme prejudice.
I almost amputated the tip of my thumb the other day trying to open one of those goddamn clamshells and I was just using scissors. Fuck whoever invented them.
Fuck whoever invented them indeed.
These are designed for the retailer’s convenience, not yours. Brick-and-mortar retailers love clamshell packaging because it is designed to be both theft and return resistant. It’s literally impossible to open without destroying, so retailers can always point to their “returned goods must be in original packaging condition” clause (rarely enforced, but always there) if they feel like denying a return for whatever spurious reason. And then, the packaging can be made unnecessarily bulky (albeit usually rather flat) which makes it tough to pocket, shoplifting sensor tags are often embedded in it, and opening it in the store to remove the product is pretty damn difficult.
Behold: the Mini-Zatoichi
While you were busy partying, I studied the blade
