Why are pickle jars so hard to open?
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On the assumption that you mean shelf-stable pickles, not refridgerated ones, it’s because they need a tight seal. This is nothing unique to pickles but pickles tend to have larger lids than a lot of other jars so you notice it more.
When they process the pickles to kill everything inside the jar so it won’t spoil (the entire reason you don’t have to refridgerate them) it creates a vacuum between the top of the liquid and the lid. That pulls the lid down onto the jar really tightly, and there’s a thin layer of rubbery stuff on the bottom of the lid that rests on the top of the jar. The combination of pressure on the lid, pressure from the lid threads, and the rubbery layer gives you a nice tight seal, and hence tasty pickles “forever”. Except when you first go to open it you need to fight that pressure and thread tension and the “stickiness” of the compressed rubbery layer. The bigger the lid, the more force this takes. Once you break the initial seal it’s usually just fine because you never recreate the vacuum.
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