It must be magic. Black magic.

So today I bought a KVM switch for the office. Turns out I can’t use it (it’s USB, my peripherals are PS2). Drat. That means I have to return the blasted thing to Staples.

The thing is, the switch came in that plastic blister packaging. You know, the kind which is perfectly molded to corral the contents and which you need scissors or perhaps even power tools to enter. Then, once you get the packaging opened you need to find a way to extract the product, which inevitably has been contorted into some unnatural form in order to “best display” its many charms through its clear plastic bonds.

OK, getting the damn thing out of the package is bad enough. But having to return it means that I had to get it back inside the now mutilated plastic. This is where I started to realize that no human could have ever gotten this KVM switch, with its nest of black cords, into the package originally. Not in the pristine state in which I found it. No, some other-worldly force had been brought to play. That’s the only way.

I did eventually get it back into the package. And no, I did not sell my soul in order to accomplish it. But I’ve resolved that the next time I have to do something like this it’s probably just worth the $80 to keep a faulty product rather than deal with breaking the laws of physics in order to get it into a returnable state.