Gas station bathroom keys. These are so gross, I don’t even want to think about them. It’s like gas stations are in a contest to see who can come up with the grottiest possible thing to attach to their bathroom keys. I wouldn’t be surprised if I walked into a Pump ‘n’ Munch and found a bathroom key attached to a lanyard tied around the neck of an aborted fetus. How can it be that modern technology has afforded us no less yak-inducing means of controlling access to public restrooms?

Mic stands. When musicians talk about “paying their dues,” here’s precisely what they’re talking about: trying to play the right chords and sing a heartbreaking love song with pathos and dignity while your mic is slowly sinking down into your cleavage.

The human lip. Lips are great for kissing and for eating ice cream cones, but how can you believe in intelligent design if you’ve ever bit your lip while eating? It’s like your own body has been turned into a physical and psychological torture device. You get mad at yourself for chewing too sloppily and biting your lip, and then your lip swells up in a manner that only makes it more susceptible to being chomped on, which makes it hurt worse and swell larger until it feels like your whole body is one giant swollen surly throbbing lip. Evolution FAIL.

Printers. Is there any more reliably frustrating family of technological device than the printer family? Granted, printers were off to a shaky start having descended from the photocopier—another perennially consternating device—but after three and a half decades of computer printers aimed at the consumer market, why is it easier to download a movie from India than to send a shopping list two feet away? Why does printer ink cost more than human blood? And are printer screen displays simply randomized to confuse us? If so, it’s working. If I could have back all the time I’ve spent in my life fighting with printers, I could build the Vikings a new stadium out of Duplo blocks.

Disposable coffee cups. You would think that Starbucks, whose customer relationships are not strengthened when coffee creeps up the seams of their cups and drips out from underneath the plastic lids and onto the white Oxford shirts of their clients who are on their way to important meetings, could figure this one out—or that experienced baristas at least would learn to position the lids such that the dangerous seam zone is in the back of the cup rather than the front.

The World Wide Web. In a world where most organizations’ websites are their most important public interfaces, why are so many websites still so bad? I don’t just mean graphic design that makes you want to slowly dissolve your eyeballs with lemon juice, I mean confusing, dysfunctional user interfaces. At about 50% of the world’s websites, doing the thing you went there to do is about as easy as finding all the ingredients for Quiche Lorraine in an unlit supermarket designed by M.C. Escher and slathered in Vaseline.

– Jay Gabler