Originally published by The Clifton Courier, June26, 2021

It’s funny what you don’t notice until you do.

Like how it took me years to notice the spelling of The Beatles was different to your garden variety beetles. This is particularly puzzling as back in my I’m-not-like-other-girls teenage phase I would listen to them quite a lot and even owned a Beatles t-shirt. I had also seen that episode of The Simpsons where they parody The Beatles many, many times. There’s a scene in the episode where Homer, Apu, Barney and Principal Skinner try to come up with a name for their band. “We need a name that’s witty at first, but that seems less funny each time you hear it,” Principal Skinner says. Then they call themselves the B Sharps. And despite all this, it was probably only a few years ago that I realised The Beatles was a punny name that would have seemed witty at first but got less funny each time people heard it.

It was right in front of my face and it never even clicked. 

Another thing that was right in front of my face was the microwave and how they all open on the same side. I say “right in front of my face” because often, when you’re using a microwave, you’re watching them so intensely it’s like you’re having a staring competition with them. 

If you’re facing a microwave, the door hinges will always be on your left. And the control panel will always be on your right. Have you ever noticed that? Or is that something that everyone just knows and accepts as the way things were meant to be?

Because it seems messed up to me. 

I mean, who decided that all microwaves were this way? Was it one appliance dictator who made this decree or is this a conspiracy all the appliance makers are in on? How come no microwave makers have the guts to go against their conformist competitors and open the other way? Who are these cowards?!

I had these thoughts while looking for a microwave to fill the microwave-shaped hole in my kitchen. 

And the microwave-shaped hole in my kitchen is hard to fill. Not because of the sixe of the void, but because of where the void is located. Unfortunately, the people who designed my kitchen those many moons ago put the microwave hole underneath an overhead cabinet so it hangs over the bench corner. You can’t stand directly in front of it, so you have to lean over the bench to get to it. And if you’re standing on the kitchen side of the bench, opening a microwave door that’s hinged on the left hand side means nearly slapping yourself in the face with said microwave door. 

So my plan was to get a microwave that opened the other way.

I don’t know if this is me showing my age, but I feel like there used to be a time when you should get microwaves with door hinges on the right hand side without much trouble. I like to think it was around the same time my place was built, otherwise those were either some very short-sighted or just downright spiteful cabinet makers. 

But it seems those golden days have passed. Because every microwave I’ve seen – and I’ve seen a lot in recent weeks – has the control panel on the right and the door hinges on the left. 

A little online research tells me what I already knew – those microwave norms were set because they suited the right-handed folk better. Opening the door with a left hand side hinge was more natural for right-handed people. And you’re much more successful at pressing the right buttons if you’re doing it with you dominant hand, so it makes sense that right-handed people felt more comfortable with the buttons being on the right-hand side.

And, look, I understand there are many more right-handed folk in the world and market forces meant the left-handed microwaves weren’t commercially viable, thus being the cause of the ceasing of their production and eventfully erasing their presence from society. Capitalism is anti-left. I get it. 

But I just really hate it when the world doesn’t cater specifically to my own individual needs and petty desires, you know?