Imagine this scenario: you're at the produce section of a grocery store and you decide to buy a couple of shiny, red, delicious looking apples.
After ripping a section off of the chain of clear, plastic produce bags, you rub one end of the bag with your fingers in attempts to separate the opening. It doesn't work. You try again to no avail. Self-consciously chuckling at yourself and thinking that you're rubbing the wrong end of the bag, you turn it around and begin applying friction to the opposite end. Once again, nothing happens. The bag is still a single sheet of plastic.
Becoming slightly frustrated and semi-self conscious that you've been standing in the same spot rubbing a bag for the past 2 minutes, you try picking at the edges of the bag in hopes that this new action will somehow separate the two sides. No dice. By now, you're getting quite upset and start feeling a little bit at a loss. All you want is to buy some apples, how can such a simple chore be so daunting? Finally, after rubbing, picking, pulling, tugging, ripping, and/or getting a new bag, the bag opens up for you and you feel the greatest sense of accomplishment. Now if only the grocery store could stock up on better produce bags.
Don't you hate having to stand in one spot for a good 3 minutes trying to complete what should be a 10 second chore? After the 1 minute mark, I start to get self-conscious and feel incredibly low IQ-ed. The only thing that makes me feel better in a situation like this is looking up and seeing that other people are also struggling to open produce bags.
Sometimes I feel like they do it just to piss us off...
