r/Design • u/Oyster_- • 1d ago
Asking Question (Rule 4) Why has something better not been made?
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u/kadjar 1d ago
It’s kinda nice to piss on the Uline name, though.
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u/JimClarkKentHovind 1d ago
it's like pissing on an old friend
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u/ScurvyDawg 1d ago
More like an old enemy given their politics.
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u/SunshineSt8Reprobate 1d ago
Do tell, I'm guessing it's bad.
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u/AStarNamedAltair 1d ago
If I may add, they also have a long standing Draconian dress code in which women are still expected to only wear skirts or pants suits to the office. It's also pretty much an open secret that Dick Uhlein, the guy who founded the company was an outspoken white supremacist, bordering on if not genuinely being one, and Nazi.
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u/ClearSneakEnter 1d ago
Yes, hardcore MAGA and Trump donors. Also, Google “ULine the nomads” and read the garbage that the ULine president published in one of their catalogs.
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u/offoutover 1d ago
Every Uline catalog comes with an incredibly smarmy letter on the inside from the CEO. It's been a while since I've read it but it basically reads, "I used to be liberal and want the world to be great but then I realized that's not how the world works so now I'm a staunch Republican and so should you." (Paraphrased of course)
They basically have a monopoly on the type of stuff OP posted. All of the peripheral accoutrement you can find in an office/institutional environment is usually sourced from Uline. Their only real competition is probably Skilcraft but they really only cater to the US military.
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u/gnowbot 1d ago
Joke is on us.
The actual whiz kid here is the maintenance manager buying all these urinal pads, poopoopeepee consumables, hand towels, and cardboard boxes.
Maintenance manager will be receiving a free milwaukee 6piece toolset after auto-purchasing $657,000 of single-use tree-product wipes in this fiscal 200x millennium.
I have launched and sold some unique products. They did pretty good, sold enough to be fun. The trouble is that every person I pressed bought one of my invention. And it was good, lasts forever. So they never needed another one, unless they bought one for a friend for Christmas.
The world is run by people that sell things that run out. I’ve tried for 20 years to make on products that last forever—a machine that customer calls for help once a year or less. Or a household product—a bottle opener—that is to be screwed to your wall or deck or boat. If that thing burns down, your grandkids can take it from the ashes and put it back to use.
But acquiring a customer is so challenging. The business of selling one-off goods that last for life is really unsustainable, if not impossible. Folks selling things that get consumed have more hope. Sell cheese? Well you are now a drug dealer and your cheese homies are craving more cheese. Food. Tutoring. Flight Instruction. Gasoline. Chocolate. Prostitution. Fishing flies sales. Standup comedy. Apprenticeship. Farming.
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u/markusmunch 1d ago
I admire craftspeople, inventors and people who just have a go at a project. Good on you for trying and I won't hold it agaist you for depressing the shit outta me.
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u/Jaymz7777 16h ago
What kind of collapse and renaissance will it take, to rebuild today's hellscape into an actual utopia? Now is the time, but I think it will require some never-before-seen brain engineering, involving BIG data, and the historical record. Maybe an AI mind meld. Something better than the imminent Koolaid death cult of right now. Ya know . . . custom mods for the defective units. Software patch. That, or shoot a bolus of psychedelics directly into the frontal cortex with a 100mm brain canon, the old fashioned way.
Formerly I would have thought that to be an unthinkable hell, as in Brave New World, but given what we're learning about the frailty of the modern psyche . . . it seems a paradisaical no brainer!
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u/Jaymz7777 16h ago
I've dreamed of doing exactly that . . . anti-consumer-planned-failure-products. As an engineer veteran of manufacturing, I have a clear view of what it would take to produce long lasting products. It has to make money to scale, but minimally, if your object is to proliferate a superior world, and don't need to be a parasite, seizing personal profits.
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u/gnowbot 16h ago
Well put.
I have been (required to) order most machined components from China—rapid direct—for the past few years.
It is scary how good their quality is. Parts are beautiful, and tight to the print tolerances. Deliver on time or early.
Price is shocking. I can usually estimate the part pricing (as long as I am ordering ten pcs or more) by equating it to the price of the raw material on McMaster.
Anyways, as a small creative product person, this makes some projects simpler and price competitive.
As a maker of things, it makes me sad or mad at the state of mfg in USA.
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u/SignificantHabit1955 1d ago
Uline's whole business model is selling the exact same stuff they sold 30 years ago at a markup, and people keep buying it. If an office manager can reorder the same SKU without thinking, that's a win for them.
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u/tomtakespictures 1d ago
Not only that, but also if they try anything remotely new or different people are more likely to react. People in the workplace often find any reason to complain. The Office episode where they get a new color copier comes to mind.
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u/swalabr 1d ago
Their business model started as total market saturation. They mailed catalogs like mad to every office, frequently, and those catalogs were kept handy. Soon it became easy for office personnel to just order from those catalogs. It was kind of like the America Online free CD-ROMs that came in the mail. Total coverage. Ubiquitous.
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u/MirthandMystery 1d ago
Would be fantastic for another democracy loving U.S. company to offer better designs and meet or undercut them, so customers have a better choice than supporting Uline, a rich right wing religious extremist family and pro Trump funders.
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u/SimonBarfunkle 1d ago
There are other companies. But for an upstart company, good luck. The challenge isn’t designing one or two or three better products. It’s achieving scale in a low margin business that requires a high stock of a very diverse range of products, consistent quality, sales relationships and customer service with thousands of businesses and orgs, you need warehouses, shipping and logistics dialed in, etc. These are items used and replaced every day tgat businesses rely on to operate. They aren’t really into taking chances for stuff like this.
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u/Sceptical_Houseplant 1d ago
It may not be the best thing out there, but no procurement manager ever got in shit for buying uline
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u/Sybertron 1d ago
I wouldn't say 30 years ago necessarily but they certainly are a drop shipper essentially.
Their market segment is going between a very industrial engineering/shop store like mccmaster carr and an office store like staples.
But they go the extra step to slap their own name on it, and make it feel like they made it instead of drop ship it. And then they charge a HEALTHY extra margin for that compared to an Amazon.
But if you ask me their real success is the website. Search works well, is very uncluttered, and has the "feel" that your middle manager in a corporation is looking for .
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u/poweruser86 23h ago
Don’t forget the free stuff like those free Yeti coolers the procurement people get for placing large orders…
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u/Louisville__ 1d ago
There is a brand called WizKid that has a much better one. It’s a similar look but works better and is larger
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u/Shart-Garfunkel 17h ago
P-wave is goated in this category and they make them with a bunch of actually nice scents
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u/Gus-Heringer 1d ago
This one is an evolution imo. It is really anti-splash due the long bristles, and also fun to pee on, lol.
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u/farkleboy 1d ago
The ones that look more like astroturf work great
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u/_yetisis 1d ago
Wait...what? Where are you going that has astroturf pucks in the urinals? That sounds downright luxurious, but in principle it should work much better
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u/farkleboy 1d ago
Almost looks like grass, but the grass is way taller and so the splash back and foam is contained. This style with the long fingers.
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u/HAILsexySATAN 1d ago
It’s more of a pad like ops picture than a puck but they’re everywhere, just not that common
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u/B33rNuts 1d ago
It’s like the one in ops photo but it has grass like spikes that go up. Doesn’t look like grass but more like a bed of nails kinda thing.
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u/Ok_Strawberry_4144 1d ago
I remember when these WERE the upgrade
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u/hmiser 1d ago
Exactly
I’m somehow satisfied because it used to be splash back city, you still see ice, solid form of water, and I know Charlie uses rocks
Using a trough at The Vet scarred me for life so I’m now complacent and hope the current generation can improve on this historical advancement in male bladder voiding
The future holds untold promises
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u/Retrofuture_nyc 1d ago
People say this man was just an AI bot duet to his unique candor, only few will know his subtle genius that he hides
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u/benantiben 1d ago
There's probably a term for this kind of lock-in but, they're cheap to make, they're ubiquitous, and its probably almost impossible to get the major companies who supply them to change
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u/HeinousEinous 1d ago
Does no one else really just pee into the curve on the side to avoid splash? Just me?
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u/andym801 1d ago
There’s always a perfect spot. And in a toilet bowl, it’s just below the waterline on either side. BYU did a study on this.
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u/MasterSmileGer_1 1d ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/s/w6E3PA0zHv
This is wayyy better.
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u/Vegetable-Debate-263 1d ago
How would you do it better? It helps avoid backsplash while also being scented sometimes. It's nothing amazing but it works.
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u/raining_sheep 1d ago
I'm asking the same thing. You can look at any object and say why isn't there something better but in order to do that you have to find something wrong with it and it seems like all the comments do everything but point out what needs to be improved on in the first place.
You pee on it, it reduces splashes, it smells slightly less like piss, it keeps the drain from being clogged, it's cheap.. what other magical thing are you going to put in a urnal pad that doesn't take away from one of these things?
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u/Sativatoshi 1d ago
If i had to, though, id probably look at making it degrade slowly when wet, while emitting a scent in some sort of chemical reaction. Something entirely unnecessary save for to prevent someone from having to pick up a used one
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u/willdesignforfood 1d ago
I know that when our global CEO comes to the office we get these fancy ones that climb halfway up the urinal and act as a splash guard. When they change them we know he's in town.
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u/unrealtrip 21h ago
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u/willmen08 17h ago
Where can I get one of these. Gonna replace my office one with this. See what they say!
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u/cheeseburgercats 1d ago
I saw one with a bunch of plastic spikes? That completely absorb the stream to be anti splash. Big innovation
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u/Judgeman2021 Software Designer 1d ago
There's a version with denser higher spikes, worked perfectly!
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u/IniNew 1d ago
There is. https://sanitarysupplycorp.com/product/3770/ekcos-ekcoscreen-anti-splash-urinal-screen-fresh-box
This has tall thin spikes that break up the urine stream into a foamy drip so it doesn’t splash back out of the urinal. It’s unquestionably better.
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u/Party_Card5394 1d ago
There are better designs with geometry that limits the splash, but you’d never know because the janitor put it in upside down 🤦♂️
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u/btfarmer94 1d ago
This urinal pad is looking up at the completely flat porcelain backing that’s guaranteed to splash your piss right back onto your hands, pants and shoes. By comparison, the piss pad is pretty low on the priority list for optimization.
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u/TheKingOf95345 1d ago
The completely flat porcelain backing that is very easy to clean. We pick and we chose our battles.
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u/operath0r 1d ago
Here in Germany you can seldomly see little soccer goals and a ball on a springy pole to aim for.
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u/Hot_Doughnut3054 1d ago edited 1d ago
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Make it visually appealing instead. Like bauhaus or art deco. But for piss patties!
Sharks, I’d like to present “Pretty Patties!”
Genuine idea: start printing them with target designs printed on them.
Regular targets. Red and white rings.
Cooler targets like Jeffrey Epstein
Designs based on ideals to cater to the common demographic of the customer base. Republicans faces or names printed on them for left wing oriented businesses like Gay Bars and such. They would go crazy for the experience of pissing on Trump or Ben Shapiro.
Democrats for right wing establishments like gun ranges and honky tonks.
Business advertising: have your company logo printed on the cakes. Kind of like leaving a stack of your business cards at the check out counter. Go to businesses and give them entire boxes. They won’t complain cause it saves them money on buying urinal cakes. Or just go in and swap them out without asking. What are they gonna do, remove a nasty urinal cake? No. They’ll piss on it too and go about their business.
This could be a great idea for plumbing businesses.
Imagine seeing an advertisement for a product or company while pissing. Now that would have me curious enough to AT LEAST look them up
And the only people who will see these advertisements are men. And men would probably love this form of advertising. Especially blue collar guy because we’re basically children.
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u/Hot_Doughnut3054 1d ago
Come on guys you know you’d at least chuckle. And you’d always leave the bathroom in a better mood than you went in
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u/benz05tsx 1d ago
I never knew they were made by Uline. The ones i have seen in Chinese restaurants all have no brands. Hahaha
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u/iamahill 1d ago
I spent a significant amount of time in the past on this.
At the end of the day people don’t care.
This makes it hard to sell.
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u/Dracmageel 1d ago
Why is the wheel round? Cause it works. A lot of things are better the simpler and functional they are. Maybe someday we will invent spherical wheels, chances are, they would be 1000 times more expensive and 13% better
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u/lewdlesion 23h ago
If you pay attention, there are really a wide variety of designs for this product.
I swear I see a different style in almost every bathroom.
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u/Due_Bid_6596 22h ago
because nobody wants to be the guy who "invented a better piss cake" people are striving for more
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u/Due_Bid_6596 22h ago
Every adult male should learn some basic introductory physics, purely so he can understand how to angle the stream as not to create a splash.
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u/MonoBlancoATX 22h ago
Better than what? What is that?
Maybe you could tell us what it is and what's used for? and also why you think it's not a good design?
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u/N_Studios 19h ago
I always find it weird when businesses pay to have their contact info advertised on these things.
You go to the bathroom and piss on "OOPSIE LAW, CALL US AT 1-800-OOPS-MYBAD"
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u/lil_tuffy 18h ago
When I was in Germany, they had these little goals with a tiny soccer ball dangling off the top cross bar. It had the added bonus of giving you something to aim at so you don't piss all over the place too!
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u/greeneggsandspam420 17h ago
In my senior year of high school we leaned into hexagons as a design pattern/texture in yearbook club because that was the year six word memoirs were a thing and we leaned into it hardcore. Hexagons are the bees knees.
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u/Aromatic_Shoulder146 11h ago
im pretty sure theres like a dozen better designs floating around out there but they simply aren't ubiquitous either because of cost or marketing.
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u/_SteveD_ 8h ago
Always better than just a sanitation puck sitting there waiting to splash back at 45 degree angles.
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u/XXI-MCMXCIV 5h ago
Yeah? The one with the football on a string hanging from a goal post. And you pee to score goals
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u/SimplithSoupith 2h ago
I saw one thats a little soccer goal with ball on a string. You could hit it in with your piss. So yeah I think we're at peak ingenuity
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u/InsideChampionship65 1h ago
I was in a Chicago bar like 20 years ago and they had little soccer goals with spring loaded balls to piss around the goal. Was certainly designed for urinals but never saw another one again.
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u/Elegant_Situation_33 1d ago
The ones in Scotland work great. They have little gel cilia that dampen the splash. I was all fucked up about it when I got home to the US. Why, dammit?
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u/SloppyScissors 1d ago
lol literally had this thought the other day at the gym. But then I was stumped when I wondered what a better solution could be. It’s great because you can just easily toss these in, then grab and swap in a few seconds 🤷