Fan's arduous assembly totally blew me away

Finally assembled - but what an effort. Photo/File

I know there are all sorts of rules and regulations governing the labelling of products, particularly where they are made.

A simple little "made in Italy" stamp on the sole of a shoe can quadruple the price tag, while conversely "made in China" can quarter it.

But what, exactly, defines "made"?

A few sneaky little fashion labels will cleverly proclaim "designed in New Zealand" in large, bold text and "made in China" in tiny letters below in a bid to mitigate the preconceptions we all have about imported goods.

But I'd like to know where I stand when, on a stinking hot day in February, I purchase a fan "made" in China and then have to spend the next few hours assembling it myself from a dizzying multitude of complicated parts.

I suppose the fact that a waist-high pedestal fan came in a box you could hide under your pillow should have been a give-away that things were not going to be easy.

But even so, the cry of despair when I opened the box and 50 million small parts tumbled out could be heard throughout the CBD.

For me, it is the realisation of my darkest fears.

The assembly instructions are almost exclusively sketched out by a retired Nasa space ship designer and, inevitably, the number of screws provided will be one short of those required to successfully assemble the item.

Screws need screwdrivers and I'd just like to know how many professional women keep one of these on their person at the office, let alone the three different sizes required for the assembly of the fan.

After canvassing nearby workplaces, I acquired the necessary screwdrivers and set about wasting precious time in my working day to put together the fan.

I couldn't help observing that the hour I spent doing this could have been charged out at three times what I actually spent on the fan. And this hourly charge-out rate was probably equivalent to 100 hours of labour had the item been put together in the country it was allegedly "made" in. Furthermore, it could have been assembled there 100 times faster.

Eventually, my fan was complete and its presence even more fully required, thanks to the time spent crawling all over the studio floor on my hands and knees to make it.

And that's where my point becomes circular: I made it. Here. In New Zealand. Not China.

One can only presume this doubled the value? Although perhaps not, since I discovered as soon as I'd tightened the very last screw that the large "Goldair" logo on the front of the fan was upside down.

I thought about fixing this, but then immediately dismissed this as an absolutely absurd idea.

I know that made-in-China imports have created a throw-away culture because products are cheap to buy and of dubious quality.

But in the case of my fan, I have invested so much of myself into the production that it will surely have to travel with me through life indefinitely now to make all the assembly stress worth it.

Next time I buy something in a suspiciously small cardboard box, I'm going to ask if it comes with a made-in-China monkey trained in tightening small screws.