A Digital Toaster Is a Reminder of All That Is Wrong in the Modern World

In October of 2001 I bought a brand new car. It was the first time in my life I purchased a vehicle that wasn’t previously owned (and isn’t that a nice way to say “used”?). Since it just had its 20th birthday, we celebrated by checking the odometer, which isn’t something I normally do. It read 60,240 miles, more or less. Pick your jaw up off the floor and let me explain.

I live in a big but geographically constrained city, hemmed in by large bodies of water, so we’ve done more growing up than out. For all these years I’ve worked an average of 6 miles from where I live. Some of those years I worked downtown and took public transportation because the cost of parking in a geographically constrained downtown core is astronomical.

So that’s the low mileage, which also explains why it’s still running, because it’s a cheap little car. There’s no computer chip in it. There isn’t even power steering, and I manually crank my windows up and down. It’s old school without being cool, unlike something like a Mustang.

What does my car have to do with my toaster? My car is fixable. Easily, because any backyard mechanic can fix it, as long as parts are available, and I’ve had friends of that description do just that. It doesn’t need to be hooked up to any kind of diagnostic machine, it’s completely incapable of interfacing with any kind of computer, and it’s the car equivalent of a windup watch.

My toaster, on the other hand, is a sleek, fancy, big, digital machine capable of browning any kind of bread product you can think of, from wafer thin to bagel thick. It’s really pretty. It currently won’t stop beeping or thinking that it’s only function is to defrost. I’ve owned it for 3 years.

Three years. That’s the lifespan of the machine, apparently, and I caught myself starting to think that 3 years wasn’t terrible. Then I slapped me and reminded myself of my car. 3 years is terrible.

There was one toaster in my house the entire time it took me to grow up from a toddler to a teenager leaving home for college. I had a cheap toaster when my kids were young that lasted a good decade.

Nothing lasts forever, but nothing seems to break down as quickly as modern toasters.

You can’t fix these modern toasters, unlike my ancient car. You can’t break into their sleek plastic shells without irretrievably and completely breaking them, and even if you could get inside, where are you going to get a microchip?

This is where our modern consumer society has led us. This is where a “growth at any cost” mindset has taken us. To cheap goods that don’t last, can’t or won’t be fixed, and will be thrown out to fill up landfills and pollute the planet. This is where we’ve ended up because of low wages and too many workers only being able to afford the cheapest products. This is the result of planned obsolescence, which businesses continue to think is a good thing.

I know, I’m hardly breaking any ground with this little rant. We all know this. But. Nothing changes. So, since we little people clearly can’t change the manufacturing strategies of global behemoths by complaining, we have to change our consumption habits, and vote with our wallets.

And now I’m off to make French toast for breakfast and seriously rethink my need for a toaster.