Wasting precious time

Being a member of the marketing/advertising community, I have a very low tolerance for bad ads - especially ones that shamelessly manipulate our emotions with the basest of tactics. One tactic that particularly upsets me is the "stop wasting your precious time" approach.

The straw that broke this camel's back was the TV commercial for McCain Roasters. You know the one where a business woman is preparing roast potatoes while at the office? She's ripping open tiny salt and pepper packets to season the potatoes she chopped while putting together a PowerPoint presentation (or similar), and there's a voiceover making exasperated noises about 'who has time to spend all day preparing roast potatoes?'

Yes, the absurdity of the situation is supposed to be funny, but I gnash my teeth every time it comes on. Not only does it anger me that a perfectly intelligent woman is depicted as being too brain-addled to peel a potato in less than eight hours, and that this product creates more waste in the name of convenience, but I hate how advertisements are constantly telling us to save-time-don't-waste-time.

Advertisers are not worried about us savouring every moment of our time here on earth. They want us to save time so that we can keep running and keep buying their products. These commercials keep us tiny guinea pigs running ever faster on our increasingly-shrinking wheels, and the whole cycle exhausts me.

Now excuse me while I peel the biggest pile of potatoes just for the pleasure of getting my hands dirty.