Sure, Sisyphus has a hard time with that rock-rolling gig. But I reckon that if the gods were truly angry with him, they would have sentenced him to an eternity of putting sleeping bags back into their case instead.
The squeeze-and-roll takes four times to work. Protractor-neat folding only goes so far. The brutish stuff-and-go may do the job, but at a hideous, bulging cost ― so why are we all so bad at the task?
Well, the question might have been answered by a recent viral X (formerly Twitter) video. In the post, a clip reveals how sleeping bags are packed into their cases before distribution ― and it’s deeply unfair to the rest of us.
How does it work?
The video showed a machine with rotating arms grabbing onto the fabric of the sleeping bag.
A worker holds the bag over the arms until the wheeling bars wrap it into compact obedience ― at which point, the sleeping bag is packed into its case.
People were (justly) outraged
If you’ve (rightly) just thought, “how am I meant to compete with a machine for case-stuffing duties?” you’re not alone.
“Now I understood why i can never repack em after opening,” one X user replied to the post.
“So they know full well people are going to struggle getting them back in,” another said.
Yet another X user called it the “gaslight of the century.”
And having looked at the (Lying! Hypocritical!) packing instruction labels on the side of my sleeping bag cases compared to the enormous, torque-wielding machine the companies themselves use to pack the bags, I’m inclined to agree.