Quantized laundry loads

I noticed over the weekend that a laundry washing machine I was moving had limited the selections available for load size to “Small” and “Super“.

This selector switch was unable to be set anywhere in between the two markers, so you really were required to quantize your laundry loads into either “small” or “super” loads.

Effectively I’d think this would translate to “is the machine more than half-full, or less than half-full?” I wonder why the product designers chose these terms. I would think that overall this likely results in more water being used than necessary, since most people probably would not select “small” unless they really only had one or two items in the machine. “Super” seems like the safer bet if you always want to make sure the clothing gets clean.

Additionally, these two terms also carry a small bit of accusation with them.

Small: “Why are you running a load of laundry with such a small amount of clothing in here? Don’t you know that is a waste of water?”

Super: “Sure, go ahead and over-stuff the machine! You must think it’s some kind of super-hero.  You couldn’t possibly split this into two loads could you? No! Once you had the machine full you had to keep stuffing more in until it was super full.”