coke
cost (product) reduction and taxpayers
i’m cheap. this should not come as a shock. i do not like to spend my money: i like to hoard it, save it, and watch it accrue interest. so when i find out that i’m getting screwed over (other than by the government), i get slightly angered.
instead of using a loofah and some aromatic body wash with scrubbing beads, i use the good ol’ fashioned bar of soap. i unwrapped a new bar to throw into my shower because i am convinced that having two small pieces of broken soap smashed together do not get me as clean as a solitary bar. however, i was appauled to find yet another way that i am getting screwed (and not in the good way).
above is my old dial soap, voluminous and ready for extended use. below is my new dial soap.
New cost reduced soap
first of all, they have changed the mold to make the soap, adding more of an arch to the center. this does two things:
1. takes total volume out of the soap.
2. makes the soap break in half faster.
points one and two lead to one thing for Henkel KGaA: increased profit on the same product. over time, i end up buying more soap because i run out faster. i obviously also break the damn bar in half faster, causing me to dispose of it more quickly. yes, this is stupid and i should not notice things like this, but the fact of the matter is that i do.
coca-cola is doing it to us too! have you noticed the new coke caps (that i cannot remove from my coke bottles)? they are significantly smaller and made of much thinner plastic. i am no plastics expert (but do possess some forms of logical reasoning), but i would surmise that having less material is cheaper. coke, this is the worst thing you could have done - i wouldn’t have minded smaller serving sizes, but making it impossible to consume my beverage is just sadistic. thank goodness budweiser hasn’t pulled the same crap. i probably would have never noticed the change here except for the fact that i find these caps nearly impossible to twist off.
New Coke Cap
i know that the goal of many corporations is to cost reduce (heck, it’s one of my company’s top five objectives), but you have to be a little less obvious about it. i hope someone else (other than me) has noticed these attrosities.
on an unrelated note, i have recently found extreme humor in the use of the word “taxpayer” as a descriptor for nearly everyone interviewed during the period of time immediately preceeding the election on tuesday. random people off of the street have been plopped in front of a camera, asked some less-than-grueling questions, have given some less-than-intelligent answers, and have been “captioned” as “Sue Smith: Taxpayer.” last i checked, we were all taxpayers. it amuses me that it is now a “title.” congratulations, you’ve been upgraded from non-taxpayer to…. screwed by the government!
alright, i’m done here. i’m going off to write more of my novel. it’s better than my blogs, i promise. (actually i shouldn’t make promises that i can’t keep)