Consumer Goods: Poor Design

Yesterday, when I got out of the bath, I had a hard time getting enough moisturizer out of the bottle. It had been warning me for a few days (with sputtering) that there soon would be no more moisturizer, but I had ignored it. Which meant that I ended up taking the squirty top off and shaking out what I needed so that the winter dryness wouldn't be too itchy on my skin.

After drying off, I upended the bottle into a plastic container, so that I might be able to collect enough moisturizer to make it through a day or two, until I had the time to run to the pharmacy.

This morning, I checked on what gravity had done. I was shocked and awed at the amount of moisturizer left after the bottle implied it was out. Look at this!



That may not seem like much, so take a look at it next to the original bottle:



You might notice the sloppy tape job. That's because I didn't think gravity alone did enough, so I cut the bottle open to scoop out every last drop of the moisturizer.



What does this say? It might say that I am not nearly as frugal as I think I am sometimes. In the past, I've assumed that a day or two of shaking the bottle removes the last little bit of moisturizer. But I like to think that it says many bad things about corporate responsibility. The Vaseline Co. (not just them, of course, it's just that I happened to have Vaseline right now) would love it if you bought new product sooner than you needed to. So they don't put much effort into creating spigots that suck out most of the moisturizer. Should we as consumers really have to go to such shenanigans? No! Says I.

Hmmm. And this is where I peter out, because that dinnertime glass of wine is hitting me harder than I expected. I know I had all sorts of consumer advocate indignant anger, but it's just *poof!* gone.

So how about I leave proving this post as an exercise for the reader, okay?