fragrant green goo
2006-07-27 | 9:35 p.m.

Guess who just sent an angry, overly-formal email to the St. Ives corporation?

Go on, guess.

Now, see if you can guess what prompted said angry, overly-formal email.

I'll give you a clue.

Remember the episode of Friends where Rachel was trying to tell Ross that she was pregnant, but she couldn't get it out because he was having a hissy-fit over a shampoo bottle that exploded in his bag?

Let's just say that I have a lot more sympathy for Ross now than I did when that episode aired.

Oh, sure, wiping down my pens and sunglasses and water bottle was easy enough. My paperwork was protected from the gooey green gel by a cheap cardstock folder that's easily replaced. My gum is in one of those sealed blister packs, thus unlikely to taste all soapy. The bag itself could use a wash anyway. And I can live with my wallet smelling vaguely of grapefruit.

But here's how I discovered that the (brand-new, previously unopened) bottle had started leaking--

My cd/mp3 player, which I had been listening to on my walk home, suddenly stopped playing, cutting the New Pornographers off mid-verse. Thinking that I'd bumped against something and hit a button, I opened my bag to take a look. What I found was a layer of fragrant green goo coating all of my things.

The cd/mp3 player appears to be irreparably broken. Which is a total piss-off, for several reasons. First, I use it a lot. I'd planned to pack it up to bring with me to cottage country with me this weekend. It gets me through my twenty-minute uphill walk to school/work every morning. I rely on portable music.

Second, although I could get a comparable player for a not-utterly-extravagant price, I don't want to do that. I'd been planning to upgrade to an iPod, using all of my Christmas-gift-from-the-parents leverage this year. I can't afford to upgrade to an iPod now. I don't know if I can make it to Christmas without portable music of some kind. But I don't want to buy a new cd player that may well get five months of use and then get shoved onto a bottom shelf and never touched again.

No, I don't for a second expect St. Ives to replace my cd player. But the crappy design of their bottles has caused a problem (admittedly not a life-shattering one, but a damn annoying one) for me, and I just wanted to let them know that I'm pissed off.

And, who knows. Maybe they (unlike the bozos at amazon.ca) will try to buy me off by sending me coupons or something. That would be nice. But I'm not holding my breath.

Sometimes, just the act of accusing someone of shoddy package design makes one feel a little bit better.

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