Follow the Instructions

"I don't need to read the instructions in order to do something so simple as installing shelves," the previous owner said, shortly before fucking up something so simple as installing shelves.

That black metal piece is supposed to be screwed directly to the wall. The shelf then slides onto two posts welded to the flat portion, at which point you drive the small black screws up through the top shelf and into a pair of holes in those posts, locking it into place.

Instead, as we can see, the previous owner simply installed some drywall screws into a pair of hollow wall anchors, spaced roughly so that the heads would slide into the insides of the posts, and called it "good enough."

I fixed it.

And now I don't have to worry about these shelves falling off the wall in the next magnitude 0.01 earthquake.