I bought this new rice cooker at Costco today:

When I opened it, I opened the instruction manual and started to page through it, while at the same time slowly unboxing the pieces.

The time in the instruction manual read 9:35:

What’s interesting about this cooker is that, out of the box, the clock was on. I assume it must have a battery in it that allows it to be resilient through power outages. Pretty cool.

As I was paging through the instruction manual, I looked down at the time displayed on the rice cooker:

9:36.

Was this some kind of wild coincidence? A minute off from what’s in the instruction manual?

Or, is this some brilliant subtle design? Opening the box maybe pulls out a protector between the battery and contacts, flipping on a clock preset to the same time in the instruction manual. And in the minute I was distracted looking at other things, I didn’t see it advance a minute.

I’m really hoping it’s this, and that the Tiger team took this kind of care in the unboxing experience. Amazing attention to detail!