The Annoyance Of Cheap Stuff

 I smashed a wristwatch a few days ago.  It was relatively new.  

I don't care for fancy watches.  A former friend of mine was so proud of his (actual real) Rolex and never understood why I wasn't all that impressed.  I don't do jewelry.  All I want from a watch is accurate time and day, and ease of reading it.  And that it be digital.

So I'm in the "cheap" category...  What is it with cheap watches that they have to be black display on a grey background?  That's hard to read.  I was gifted an early digital watch as a teenager (a Quasar - sp?).  Nice black display on white.  Easy to read.  Kept perfect time for 40 years (with a new battery every 5 years).  Sadly, the innards finally failed.  I loved it for the simplicity.  All I ever had to do was change to DST and back to EST.  It had 2 buttons and each did 1 thing.

My experience with watches has been poor ever since.  The best replacement I found at a reasonable cost was black on grey.  And too much information on it.  I know what day of the month/date/week it is.  I don't need an alarm, a countdown function, a countup function, or a timer.

My previous newer watch had 3 buttons.  The first engaged "settings".  The other 2 let me cycle through options to change the time (up and down).

The newest watch had 4 buttons (and the same black on grey screen).  It lost a minute per month so had to be reset sometimes.  I had to read the instructions every time.  And then the buttons stopped working.  Oh, I could move from one function to another, but nothing stayed "set".  Except alarm beeps at midnight.  

I tried everything in the instructions to stop it, with no success.  I finally smacked it a few times on my workbench just to stop the alarm (5 days ago).  Today, it started beeping at me again every 5 minutes starting at midnight.  The alarm refused to die.

So I whapped it again on the desk until it stopped.  Silent for an hour...  (hurray)  I'm wearing my previous watch for now. I like it better than I did before.  😊.   I want a simple to set, easy to read, basic digital wristwatch.

If anyone has a recommendation, I'm listening...