How Much Brain Power Should This Take?

I'm currently in San Antonio, helping my sister-in-law and brother-in-law move to a new home. Amazingly enough, in this day and age, the house they were moving into did not have smoke detectors, so it was off to Wal-Mart for new ones. SIL decided to spend a little extra and get the "premium" detectors, from the company who claims their detectors will be the "First" to "Alert" you if you catch my drift.

Now for years we've had smoke detectors in our home that have a battery installation that is extremely simple. Snap the batter into the metal clips designed especially for 9 volt batteries, and make sure you use the clip in the back to hold it in place. A child could do it in 5 seconds. But in the business world, you know those people who think they know more about education than us teachers, if you're not changing you're not moving forward, and a battery clip that works but is an old design simply won't do. The new "First" to "Alert" you smoke detectors have a new swinging out battery compartment along the outer edge.

The only problem is, 9 volt batteries are rectangular, the smoke detector, and it's swing out battery compartment, have a rounded edge. We could not get the batteries installed without a major struggle.

I managed to get one in, after about 10 minutes of struggling and actually banging it on a countertop, at which point SIL decided she would just return them. Later we examined the brain power in the room trying to get these batteries installed.

Collectively we had: A BS in Education, an M_Ed in Education, a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, and a Medical Doctor. Lest you think we were not prepared to deal with a mechanical device, there was also a BS in Biomedical Engineering.

I don't mean to brag, but I think its safe to say we had an above average amount of brain power in the room, and still couldn't figure out this supposedly new and better battery compartment.

So much for progress