So a co-worker of mine pointed out what he calls the “height of laziness” and what I call “one button snacking”. Yes, we are talking about the microwave button labeled “popcorn”. One bag, one button, one perfect snack. This sparked a quick conversation about this button, and among other things, why it hasn’t caught on for anything else. He mentioned that it existed briefly for the potato, and then pointed out that it likely did not last due to the varying possible sizes of potato and thus the inability to properly calculate the appropriate cooking time and cooking power to associate with such a button. Microwave popcorn is fairly uniform in package size, cooking needs, etc…more on this in a moment.

Let me pause to say that right now I am truly embarrassed with myself for getting this wrapped up in such a discussion. But this must be brought out. So I continue.

The craziness surrounding this 1 square inch of microwave real estate continues. We thought about the popcorn industry and what came first - the popcorn or the popcorn button. Presumably the popcorn did, but with the advent of the popcorn button, has the popcorn industry now become a slave to the microwave industry? What if Orville Redenbacher sees a decline in the profit margin of microwave popcorn and decides that in order to save a million dollars next year, they need to cut package size by 5% and if they don’t, they will go under. I’ll tell you what happens, people using “the button” to cook Orville’s popcorn are suddenly burning bag upon bag and pretty soon no one buys Orville Redenbacher anymore and the entire company goes under anyways.

All of this because someone thought that making a single button to cook a single item easier would make sense. Next time you push that popcorn button on your microwave, remember…you aren’t just cooking a snack, you are controlling an industry.