Sticky barcode tea, now with paper bits

I like loose tea, and a while back, I bought a Bodum stainless, single-cup tea infuser to keep at my desk at work (I don’t quite qualify as a tea snob, though). When I decided to make my first cup of tea with it, I opened the crinkly plastic packaging and removed the strainer and lid to find that stuck onto the bottom of the strainer, covering nearly all of the holes, was a product barcode tag.

Surely, I thought, given Bodum’s emphasis on functional design, this would be one of those vinyl tags with the nice post-it-note-like adhesive that just peels right off. I might have to run it under some warm water to get rid of the last little bit of residue, but then I’d be ready for a nice cup of tea.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be the paper variety with the unnecessarily strong adhesive. The ones that come off in bits the size of grains of rice and leave their sticky backing firmly attached to the product.

I prefer milk and honey in my tea, rather than ink, paper, and glue, so hopefully soaking the thing for a while will get rid of the tag remnants.

In general, I like Bodum products. My experience has been that they typically do what they say they will, and have nice design aesthetics. While I don’t know for sure that the tag was put there by Bodum (I bought it on Amazon), it seems like it was since it had a bright red Bodum logo on it. I do know, however, that the tag turned a potentially nice product into a very frustrating initial experience.