The Importance of Earnest Service

Though I often think of it when irritated opening most products I haven’t written about packaging since 2013, the first post on the subject in 2009. It’s no surprise that toothpaste tubes have found a place in a few. Thirteen years ago I wrote: “So that toothpaste can no longer be accused of breaking up marriages, i.e. “You never put the top back on the toothpaste tube!”–some manufacturers attach the top to the tube. In my experience, those tops usually don’t stay closed, making me want to divorce the manufacturer.”

Four years later  I complained about the heavier than standard tubes with silver finish that cost more but suffered from the same fault: they soon didn’t close, the paste dried up requiring a thin wood shish kebab stick to reach and extract usable product.

This time toothpaste tubes are in the news for being recyclable. Kate Betrand Connolly wrote in packagingdigest.com: “Demonstrating its continued commitment to increasing packaging sustainability, Colgate-Palmolive Co. is launching its new Smile for Good toothpaste brand in the recyclable high-density polyethylene (HDPE) tube the company introduced last year.” She continued: “The tube reboots toothpaste packaging design by replacing non-recyclable laminate materials with a squeezable material made entirely from HDPE—which is, of course, readily recyclable.”

Elizabeth Segran wrote in fastcompany.com “Colgate’s designers have spent more than five years redesigning the brand’s toothpaste tubes so they can be recycled in curbside bins…….But the big question is whether consumers will be able to change their behavior and recycle their old tubes after decades of throwing them in the trash.”

The toothpaste tube’s journey gives me an excuse to gripe about some recent battles with packaging.

• I adore all things L’Occitane but had to use brute strength to dislodge the entire top of this cream to get at it. Otherwise, no amount of shaking and squeezing, even after leaving it upside down overnight, encouraged the cream to leave its container through the too-narrow hole topping the container.
• Same with the shampoo bottle. To get all of it out, the only way is to remove the top.
• That I didn’t need stitches after opening the packaging protecting a mouse–using scissors and a variety of knives including utility–is a miracle. Maybe Colgate Palmolive can encourage electronics manufacturers to figure out a less dangerous and more environmentally conscientious way of shipping its goods.

More and more wine bottles have deep-sixed corks or cork substitutes for twist off tops. These are a cinch to open. Why can’t seltzer bottles be made easier to open too?

Will you have trouble remembering to put your retrofit Colgate toothpaste tube in the recycling bin? Have you done battle with packaging lately? Have some manufacturers greatly improved how to access their products?

For a moderately good housekeeper these are stressful times especially since I can’t find the ideal products recommended for coronavirus whistle-cleaness.

So I wonder: “Did I clean the plastic bags correctly? Are my apartment keys virus free? My credit card? Do I really have to wash my hair every time I go outside? Did I catch every nook and cranny of that tuna can or OJ bottle? What about my jacket pocket where I keep my phone? And the phone itself?”

And then I remember what happened one summer vacation in high school. I was in southern Italy with two classmates and the mother and brother of one. For our safety, Mrs. G was scrupulously careful about the water we drank–it had to be bottled. At the time we didn’t care for fizzy water but that seemed to be the only kind available. One day we found a restaurant with bottled still water. We were gleeful. As we sipped our drinks through a straw–real straw–we suddenly realized that the ice in our drinks was made with local water. None of us got sick.

Fact: My home will never be as clean as an operating room–live with it [I hope].

Joseph G. Allen’s Washington Post opinion piece “Don’t panic about shopping, getting delivery or accepting packages” put some of my concerns in perspective. He claims low risk for “box delivered by UPS, touch packages at the grocery store or accept food delivery.” Allen is at the Harvard T. H Chan School of Public Health in its Healthy Buildings Program.

He wrote “First, disease transmission from inanimate surfaces is real, so I don’t want to minimize that. It’s something we have known for a long time; as early as the 1500s, infected surfaces were thought of as ‘seeds of disease,’ able to transfer disease from one person to another.”

Today a New England Journal of Medicine article is trending [and scaring]. “The coronavirus that causes covid-19 ‘was detectable . . . up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel.’”

Allen shared an example of an Amazon package delivered by an infected driver who wiped his/her nose, didn’t wash hands and touched your package. “Even then, there would be a time lag from when they transferred the virus until you picked up the package at your door, with the virus degrading all the while. In the worst-case scenario, a visibly sick driver picks up your package from the truck, walks to your front door and sneezes into their hands or directly on the package immediately before handing it to you.”

Allen then described a model–think pieces of pie. “For disease to happen, all of the pieces of the pie have to be there: sick driver, sneezing/coughing, viral particles transferred to the package, a very short time lapse before delivery, you touching the exact same spot on the package as the sneeze, you then touching your face or mouth before hand-washing.”

He wrote to cut the chain: leave the package outside or right inside the door for a few hours and wash your hands. He continued: “you could wipe down the exterior with a disinfectant, or open it outdoors and put the packaging in the recycling can. (Then wash your hands again.)”

Regarding grocery stores: “Keep your hands away from your face while shopping, and wash them as soon as you’re home. Put away your groceries, and then wash your hands again. If you wait even a few hours before using anything you just purchased, most of the virus that was on any package will be significantly reduced. If you need to use something immediately, and want to take extra precautions, wipe the package down with a disinfectant. Last, wash all fruits and vegetables as you normally would.”

Feel better? What precautions are you taking? Any shortcuts? Can you share examples of when a goal of perfection fell short yet all was well in the end?

I found fault with the hullabaloo over the so called huge benefits to the environment when businesses announced they were banning  plastic straws in the post “Service of the Last Straw,”—literally too little in the plastic litter wars.

I perked up reading Saabira Chaudhuri’s article “The World’s Biggest Brands Want You to Refill Your Orange Juice and Deodorant–P&G, Nestlé and others try to curb plastic waste; Tropicana in glass bottles, Tide in metal cans.”

Chaudhuri reported: “Refillables once dominated industries such as beer and soft drinks but lost out to convenient, affordable single-use containers. In 1947, refillables made up 100% of soft-drink containers by volume and 86% of beer containers, according to the Container Recycling Institute, a nonprofit. By 1998 those figures dropped to 0.4% and 3.3%, respectively.”

She added that the refill business exists but is niche, done by some grocery stores and entrepreneurs largely

in shampoo and detergent businesses.

The trial will include PepsiCo’s Tropicana OJ in a glass bottle and Quaker Chocolate Cruesli cereal in stainless steel. Some of P&G’s 10 participating brands include Pantene shampoo in aluminum and Tide in stainless-steel.

In addition, Chaudhuri wrote: “Shoppers who the companies select for the trial will be able to order hundreds of products—including Nestlé’s Häagen-Dazs ice cream and Clorox Co.’s wet wipes—from a website for home delivery. Products arrive in a reusable tote with no extra packaging. Once finished, users schedule a pickup for empty containers to be cleaned and refilled. They can sign up for a subscription-based service that replenishes products once empty containers are returned. TerraCycle will handle delivery, returns and cleaning.

“The products will cost roughly the same as the versions in single-use containers, but users will also have to pay a deposit of $1-$10 per container. Shipping charges start at roughly $20, decreasing with every item added.

“Susan Collins, head of the Container Recycling Institute, said high deposit fees could be a barrier to entry for many consumers. ‘It sounds like it’s only meant to attract the most green, virtuous shoppers,’ she said.

I’d add that customers who look for sales are also out of the loop.

“TerraCycle hopes to bring big retailers on board so that customers eventually buy and return most of the products in store or online via retailers, lowering the project’s costs and expanding its reach,” Chaudhuri concluded.

If shoppers don’t have a doorman or house staff or if they aren’t retired, who will accept the packages and what about ice cream sales shipped in summer? Will the shipping and container costs impact the success of these initiatives? Can we go home again, to the middle of last century, when refills in certain product categories were standard? Will a sufficient number of customers, spoiled by taking three seconds to toss out a bottle or container, make the time to wash out each container and prepare the package to ship it back?

Packaging has inspired me to jot yet another post, this time inspired by some stunning simple brown bags of flower bulbs [photo above] that caught my eye on my way to buy food at Adams Fairacre Farms in Poughkeepsie. Like the sound of the first ice cream truck’s bell in spring, the images of flamboyant blossoms and simple display on a brisk day at winter’s end attracted me and no doubt many other customers.

That’s the only positive packaging example today. I was dismayed by the deception of the iron-on patches made to look as though they took up the length of the paper sleeve [photo right] when in reality, they hardly made it to halfway [photo left].

And while I’ve mentioned toothpaste tubes before, I have not been happy living with this heavier-than-standard gauge tube with a silver finish that, for its heft and shine, comes at a higher price. I was duped into thinking it would be better than the typical tube I’ve bought for decades. Half the time the top doesn’t close and when this happens the paste hardens when air hits it [which is a formula problem as the other paste doesn’t do this in the hours between brushings]. I need to search kitchen drawers for something long and thin to pry out the hard stuff that even countless squeezes won’t dislodge. It’s back to the standard tube for me!

Do you have any packaging praises or gripes to share?

News moved the spotlight on packaging again-you must have read about those striped Tide detergent pods, reminiscent of candy, that have poisoned young children, who are fooled into thinking that they look good enough to eat [photo below, right]. Even the container is reminiscent of the ones in old fashioned penny candy store displays.

I’ve covered packaging several times before, not because it looks good enough to eat and poisons but because it frustrates and can even cut you.

I’m embarrassed to admit how hard and long I tried to open the liquid soap in the photo above. [You see it in its ready-to-use state. Missing is the mystery piece that stumped us.] I’d twirl the plastic pump, inspect the hose, pry the top with a knife hoping to coax it up and down…even my husband determined it was faulty after giving it a few minutes of his time. So my nephew came over for dinner, walked to the kitchen sink where I’d left the recalcitrant setup, snapped off the white plastic middle piece and gave his hands a squirt. I stood dumbfounded.

I told him about my history with the thing and to make me feel better he admitted that packaging had baffled him at times. He owns a body shop. A front strut–shock absorber–that was locked for shipping, fooled him and his crew when they tried to get it to function before installing it in a car. After a while one of the men pointed to the instructions that told them to hold it down and twist it-like a childproof pill bottle top. That worked and he felt silly. (I saw no instructions on my liquid soap container.)

I wonder if my husband owns shares in companies that make popcorn or chips. When he’s torn open the package, top to bottom, the leftovers are guaranteed to turn stale in a trice. [Is that where the term “stalemate” came from?]

Have you cut yourself trying to open the hard plastic containers [pictured left and below] that increasingly hold dips, crackers, salsa and other goodies? While they keep the items fresh, [hooray!] you need strong or metal-coated fingertips or no fingernails to pry them open.

Sometimes I think the packaging that gets between me and the products I want to use or eat are deliberately difficult to open so I end up breaking or ruining them. That causes the contents to spoil or spill. The result?  I need to buy more sooner than necessary.

What packaging do you praise or struggle with?

I’ve always used Tide laundry detergent and my mother did also. That is until recently. A large bottle of the stuff just doesn’t seem worth $26 to me especially when I can get something else the same size that cleans our clothes and smells just fine for $7 or $9.

It doesn’t matter how you dress up the bottle. Sarah Nassauer wrote in The Wall Street Journal about how marketers of products from Doritos to Downy–and Tide–are trying to pry open wallets by harking back to the 1970s for packaging design precisely because the brands are feeling competition from the less expensive private label offerings. I think that nostalgia and product loyalty go only so far when stringent budgets are concerned.

In New! Improved! (and Very Old) Nassauer wrote: “As a direct appeal to get moms to buy more Hostess snacks for their kids, the company earlier this year brought back some logos and animated characters from the ’70s and ’80s, such as Twinkie the Kid and King Ding Dong for a limited time. ‘Today’s moms are in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and ’70s packaging is what they remember,’ says Amy Clark, director of snack marketing for Hostess. Hostess hoped parents would ‘want to pass it down, share it with their own kids,’ she says.” [While nobody asked me, I say teach the children to make cupcakes.]

I adore vintage patterns from textiles designed in the 19^th century such as those by William Morris. I wonder if designs over 50 years old translate to food and cleaning products when price is concerned. According to Nassauer, “The emotional play for shoppers doesn’t always work. Kraft Foods Inc. produced a retro look for the 2009 redesign of its Miracle Whip brand, incorporating elements of the brand’s original label from 1933. At the time, with a recession in full swing, there was a longing to ‘celebrate the past and push toward our future,’ says Carol-Jacqueline Nardi, director of design and innovations for Kraft.” I wonder if Kraft marketers were thinking clearly. While 85 year olds may have warm and fuzzy memories of a 78 year old package design, how many of them will eat a ton of Miracle Whip?

I fell for a $1 tin of Nivea cream [I didn’t need] at the checkout counter of my favorite discount cosmetics store. But what closed the sale: The price or the cute mini blue and white tin with the familiar Nivea name?

Packaging is an art. But I wonder about its impact on consumer choice as disposable income is increasingly diverted to cover necessities and as more and more money is owed to Messers C. [as in Con] Edison, C. [as in Central] Hudson [Gas and Electric], Mobile-Exxon and others? Do sufficient numbers of wallets have enough flexibility to fall for the charming, familiar or stunning package?

I couldn’t open the front door after the blizzard this week and it got me to think again about disobedient packaging. I last covered the topic in April 2009 focusing on medicine bottles and boxes of brown sugar that are crummy for storing the leftover because the sugar turns to brick no matter what you do [on purpose, no doubt]. The comments to the original post covered almost everything else but because of some recent glitches, I felt moved to again address the topic as most manufacturers have not gotten any better.

Take cereal boxes. I can’t get the flap to stay closed and there’s no good way to open the inside packaging so as to keep air out of the cornflakes.

I fought with a five pound bag of flour hoping to unwrap the folded over top part, jiggling it with a knife and coaxing it open with my fingers. I wanted the package to protect what was left after I’d removed several cups for holiday baking. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t do anything with it but cut open the side. Infuriating.

Two adults worked to jiggle open a milk carton. We ended up using a knife and creating an awkward pouring shape for the life of the quart. This happens too often to say that the carton was a lemon. Some milk comes with a plastic twist off cap that works well, if you want to pay an extra $1. And then there are plastic bottles. But some people don’t care to buy food or drink in plastic.

Several people in previous comments mentioned struggling with CD wrapping. That’s a puzzle because the exterior cellophane doesn’t involve food or medicine safety. Its inaccessibility has to do with theft in which case manufacturers might package CDs ordered over the Internet differently from those bought in a store.

I have the cuts to confirm another comment made almost two years ago about the challenge of breaking open the super thick plastic around light bulbs and electronic equipment. This option by manufacturers has to do with keeping the items intact during shipping and no doubt, discouraging theft. With all the talk of the environment and the importance of using green light bulbs, you’d think that manufacturers would revert to the paper packaging of yore or think of something else because those heavy plastic covers must remain intact in dumps for eons.

In addition to the milk carton cap, I can think of one other advancement: The bag our kitty’s cat food comes in. There’s a clearly marked perforated line to rip open the bag and half an inch below the perforation the bag pinches closed along ridges, similar to the way some baggies work.

I’d love to hear of your packaging battles and of enhancements you’ve discovered.

Have you ever watched a movie and had to leave early–so you don’t know the ending? I like to know what happens. So here are some follow-ups to four previous posts.

Postal “Service”

Mervyn Kaufman wrote about his excruciating US post office experience in “Service of Ho Hum,” December 8, 2009. The who cares attitude he described struck us in other ways this Christmas, the first year that the postal service lost two packages-one we sent and one destined for us, mailed from the Midwest.

All we have from our lost package is the address and return address ripped from the book mailer packaging and sent us, with a printed form letter postmarked Atlanta, noting that the package had fallen apart and sorry, but the contents [wrapped gifts] were lost. The package, mailed from upstate New York, was slated for New Hampshire.

In addition, a letter with a check in it that we mailed to Brooklyn in mid-December has yet to arrive or be returned, and we hear from a friend who lives in the Midwest that she hasn’t received a bill from a credit card company for the past two months. All this happens as USPS business continues to drop off while staffing doesn’t.

Fur Flying

We left Catherine C’s story in “Service at the High End,” November 23^rd, up in the air. Did the furrier find and return her lost coat? No. This is what she reported:

“I got a check from my insurance company, which will duke it out with the furrier.  I had to ask the furrier to give me a refund for the storage, cleaning, and relining of my coat (shouldn’t have had to ask), and I never got any kind of written apology.  I still believe the latter knows what happened to my coat.

“I’ve learned some things that make me question their quality and make me thankful I’m no longer dealing with that firm. I’m glad I didn’t take their offer of a more expensive coat if I paid the difference in value between the new one and my coat.

“I am in the process of having a new coat made at a furrier that was recommended by the style editor of my client, Departures magazine.  It happens to be a close friend’s furrier, too.  And I’ve triangulated and heard only good things.  This furrier stores on premises, which is good.  It’s taken me a little while to get my head around the whole idea of making a coat because there’s an element of faith involved in what it’s going to look like.  It’s starting to come together.  Wish I had it now!” [Catherine wrote this on a frigid day.]

Ring Up a Great Deal

On a cheerier note, I visited the same T-Mobile phone store that was the subject of the January 28, 2009 post, “Good Service is In the Air, Isn’t It?” Last year, I bought a cell phone with charger, earphones and 1,000 hours of service for $130–$10.83/month for 12. The purpose of the visit last week was to renew the account, which I did for $10-there were 700 phone hours left to use. This brings the monthly cost of the phone and service to $5.83-for what I hope will be 24. The charming and efficient young woman helping me had me in and out of the store in minutes.

Cup of Joe from Sam

And Sam in his coffee cart– “Coffee Service with More than a Smile,” December 15, 2009–is as welcoming as ever. His music transitioned this month from seasonal Christmas to energetic music with a Middle Eastern twist. He’s added a variety of cold cereal to his breakfast offerings and his prices remain reasonable–75 cents for a cup of coffee.

We missed him when he left a substitute coffee person to tend his cart on the southeast corner of 44^th Street and Third Avenue so he could visit his family in Egypt. The substitute had no interest in any of us–didn’t bother to remember if we took sugar, skim or regular milk and could be sour and rude. He also left each day hours before Sam does.

Do us a big service: Share some follow-ups either from one of our post topics or your life.

I’m not sure anyone wins when a company hits its customers with hidden charges. Seems crazy to go to the trouble to make a sale and then either turn away or annoy the customer when there are so many better, legitimate, straightforward ways to get the money you need to make a profit.

I’ve known PR agencies that cheat on out of pocket expenses rather than charge the fee that they should.

I have a favorite place to buy tops and sweaters, a manufacturer that also sells directly to the public. I dove at the opportunity to buy a $60 summer tee shirt reduced to $20 at season’s end, until at checkout I saw a $10 charge for shipping and handling.

The shirts are sold in protective plastic bags and it takes one second to toss one in an envelope. It can’t break and it weighs less than a pound. I cancelled the order–I felt taken. Yet, I might have bought the shirt priced at $25, with a $5 shipping and handling charge.

A friend picked up the phone to buy a gadget advertised on TV for $19.95–a second one would only cost the price of shipping and handling. The order-taker wouldn’t let him request the car-conference-calling-gizmo he wanted. The operator kept trying to divert him to buy this, that and the other, wasting his time and irritating him. When he was emphatic that he only wanted the one item, he was told to expect it to take a few months to arrive.

Many airlines charge a fee for checked or overweight luggage and one, I heard on a weekend radio travel talk show, charges passengers who use the lavatory. Meanwhile, a friend’s airfare increased only $15 by adding a detour to New York City on her way to San Diego. Starting point: Minneapolis! So why not charge a proper amount for the travel and stop the nickel-and-diming?

There is an exception. Some books in the secondary market on Amazon.com are priced at almost nothing. The rock-bottom book charge is almost ridiculous so I don’t mind paying twice the cost of the book for postage and packaging, even if I know that shipping Media Mail is inexpensive.

What hidden costs exasperate you? Do people think that their customers are stupid?

Maybe there is the same amount of liquid as always in the cup of coffee I bought this morning but I doubt it. The size of the cup is dramatically smaller than standard takeout and nowhere near as big as the cup I usually get from this vendor. The price is the same.

The coffee industry isn’t the only culprit in flim flammery, but as I walked it back to my office, I immediately thought of the old one pound coffee can trick where the measure of grounds inside continues to shrink to as little as 10.5 ounces while the tin stays the same. Wonder if this visual hyperbole carries over to words at Starbucks where you don’t buy a small cup of coffee–it’s a “tall.”

I’ve purchased boxes of fancy cookies only to find, with company already in the house, that there are embarrassingly few inside. I hate to serve a skimpy plate of anything. Reminds me of folks who buy one chicken and cut it up into a million small pieces for six guests to share, leaving one generous piece that the host, last to be served, takes with a reluctant sigh, “Since nobody else wants it…..” [True story.]  Or the host who buys ¼ lb of sliced smoked salmon for a crowd of brunch guests and comments to his wife, at the end of the party [with some guests still around to hear], “See dear, we had plenty of salmon, there’s some left” which is only true because nobody dared take what little there was. [Also true.]