By ROBERT PRICE, Associate Editor ---

Easy assembly. Says so right on the side of the box.

I can do easy assembly. Easy assembly means you snap six pegs into six holes, maybe tighten a couple of screws. Then you stick a little paper umbrella into your icy, refreshing beverage, dangle your feet in the swimming pool, lean back and admire your handiwork. Your job is done.

I opened the box containing my bistro table-slash-propane patio heater, purchased that afternoon from a home improvement store that I really should own stock in, and pulled out the instruction manual. Bad sign right off the bat.

Instructions for something requiring “easy assembly” should be a single sheet, not a 16-page booklet. “Easy assembly” instructions should start out with the admonition: If you need to bother with these instructions, you are lacking in either testosterone, common sense or basic American ingenuity.

The list of instructions started out with unpacking directions. This worried me. If it’s complicated coming out of the box, it’s got to be complicated in the going-together phase. I went straight to the back page of the assembly manual to see if my new acquisition had been fabricated in China. It’s not that I fear Chinese products, per se. It’s more that I fear Chinese-translated-to-English assembly instructions.

Whew. Manufactured in Bowling Green, Ky.

OK, let’s see ... Estimated assembly time: 55 minutes. What?

OK, now I had an issue. A very big issue. Fifty-five minutes is not “easy assembly.”
Fifty-five minutes is approaching Weekend Project status, and I need 48 hours, minimum, to properly psych myself into a Weekend Project. I might have attempted to shove everything back into the box, but everything was on the floor now, in orderly stacks, and the directions did not include a section called “repacking instructions.” I was stuck.

The wife tried to be reassuring. We can do this together, she said. I’ll read the instructions, you work the #2 Phillips screwdriver.

An offer of help. Yet another ominous sign. Foolishly, I accepted.

At the one-hour mark: “Did I say you were supposed to screw down the support pillars before you attached the lower table panel? Sorry, it was supposed to be the other way around.”

Ah, so that’s why it doesn’t fit. Well, give me a minute, then, to just remove these 48 screws.

At the two-hour mark: “Did I say the burner support plate goes on top of the emitter bracket? Actually, it goes underneath.”

Well, of course. Hold on for a second while I grab this decorative grate and gouge my eyes out.

After three hours and forty-five minutes, sprawled on the ground in a pool of sweat and tears, I screwed in what I believed to be the final screw. My thumb was numb, and my lower back felt like I’d just spent the afternoon in the trunk of a Mini Cooper.

Did the finished product look anything like the picture on the box? Yes, thank God, it did.
 
If I had the energy, I might work up a little righteous indignation. While our state and federal legislators piddle away their time wrestling with immigration reform and troop draw-downs, manufacturers continue to perpetrate the hoax of “easy assembly” on innocent consumers like you and me.

A worker who has been assembling this particular bistro table-slash-propane patio heater every day for the past six months could undoubtedly put one together in under 55 minutes.

Normal people will need two hours. Normal people who have spouses assisting them may need four.

There ought to be a law. Let’s get it on the books before somebody really hurts himself. Now, can someone please show me how to turn this thing on? It’s hard to read sweat-mottled operating instructions when your neck won’t turn.

Contact Robert Price at 395-7399 or rprice@bakersfield.com.