I am exhausted after my long battle with a mighty foe. But at least I can claim victory. Yes, I successfully opened a new bottle of mouthwash.
D. K. Wall:I know I'm prone to a wee bit of exaggeration from time to time. You might be doubting the effort it took, so allow me to regale you.
D. K. Wall:The first step is easy enough. Unscrew the cap. A simple twist of the fingers and the top is loose in my hand.
D. K. Wall:The bigger problem lies underneath. Or should I say smaller problem? Teensy weensy, itty bitty microscopic issue.
D. K. Wall:The opening of the bottle is covered with a tamper resistant foil seal. The type that can't be removed without divine intervention.
D. K. Wall:I am old enough to remember why these safety features were added. Way back in 1982, some whackadoodle that's a technical law enforcement term infused Tylenol capsules with potassium cyanide, killing seven people.
D. K. Wall:Allow me a massive understatement by saying, This was bad. But it turned out to be worse, because it became evident that the tampering occurred after manufacturing.
D. K. Wall:Maybe in the store. Maybe at a distributor. However it was done, and no one was ever convicted, food and drug safety changed forever. Manufacturers added tamper resistant packaging to make fiddling with products harder.
D. K. Wall:Capsules became caplets hard, impossible to swallow lumps of pharmaceuticals. Childproof caps, already a decade old menace, were joined by shrink bands and foil seals sending thousands of seniors to their grandchildren to open the blasted things.
D. K. Wall:Thus, the opening to my bottle of mouthwash is covered with a piece of foil. So strong, so magical that no one could possibly insert a syringe full of poison and squirt it into the bottle. Because, you know, you can't puncture foil with a sharp object. Right?
D. K. Wall:Regardless of my doubts about the efficacy of their methods, I am faced with this dubious safety feature. And I need to remove it.
D. K. Wall:Fortunately, the manufacturer has thought of that. They have helpfully given me a tab protruding from the foil. All I need to do is grab it and peel it off the bottle.
D. K. Wall:Unfortunately, the tab is roughly the size of a pinhead. If a gnat tried to land on it, it couldn't get all its feet on the surface. And yet, I am expected to grab it with my fingers.
D. K. Wall:Why, you ask, would some company make the removal tab so tiny? Cost savings, of course. You laugh, but this is cosmic revenge for my crimes against humanity. The early years of my finance career were in manufacturing. In fact, in cost accounting.
D. K. Wall:I was one of the little bean counters who worked with engineers to figure out ways to squeeze pennies out of everything.
D. K. Wall:I remember a series of meetings with industrial engineers as we studied the amount of thread used to manufacture a pair of blue jeans.
D. K. Wall:We identified a way to use a bit less thread in every pair. Spread over several million pairs of jeans a year, it was real money. Besides, no one would ever notice a little thread unraveling from your pants.
D. K. Wall:Wait. Stop. Don't send me those emails with photos of fraying pockets and unraveling hems asking if I am the culprit. I promise I have left that life behind. I am a reformed accountant. I no longer practice the evil art.
D. K. Wall:Still, it's easy for me to imagine a conference room where engineers and accountants gather around a table and map out plans to make the tab on a bottle of mouthwash just a tiny bit smaller.
D. K. Wall:A young man, the ink on his NC State diploma still wet, stands at a whiteboard drawing diagrams showing how he can redesign the machines to shave a sixteenth of an inch from the tab.
D. K. Wall:A young woman punching the keys on a calculator squeals that the redesign will save $40,000 a year. A middle aged man speaks up from the rear, saying his customer service team wonders how to handle complaints.
D. K. Wall:Receiving a withering scowl from the CFO, the man says nothing more and prays he hasn't just added himself to the next round of layoffs. No one ever sees him again.
D. K. Wall:Well, I'm here to tell you the fruits of their labor. I struggle to get my fingers to grab hold of that miniscule tab. Each time I succeed, I pull, but my fingers slip.
D. K. Wall:Fingernails, of course, would be quite useful in this task if only I weren't a habitual nail chewer. I've tried to quit but have been no more successful at that than I've been in removing safety seals.
D. K. Wall:In desperation, I claw through a drawer in my bathroom and extract a pair of tweezers. Sadly, the tweezers lack the tactile feel of my finger, so finding and gripping the petite tab is nigh impossible.
D. K. Wall:Next, I balance a flashlight on the counter and tilt my head up and down, trying to find the exact focal point in my progressive glasses. Trifocals only with a more palatable name.
D. K. Wall:When I finally spot the tab, it glints like a fleck of gold in a creek bed. Seeing it, alas, is not the same as grabbing it. The moment I tip my chin to aim the tweezers, my target vanishes in the haze of trifocals or progressives.
D. K. Wall:When all else fails, I resort to teeth. My attempt to gnaw the tab leaves me with nothing but a mouthful of plastic shavings from the bottle's neck.
D. K. Wall:Back to the drawer I go, rifling for any tool that might remove my nemesis. Upon spying a pair of scissors, I envision beheading the bottle, removing everything from the neck up.
D. K. Wall:Though I realized soon enough that resealing a decapitated container would be even more challenging.
D. K. Wall:The scissors, though, do give me a much more practical solution. With a quick stab, I easily slice through the foil. So much for an unpuncturable safety barrier.
D. K. Wall:I stare at the gaping hole, trying to keep at bay any thoughts of an evil dweeb lacing my mouthwash with poison, and then pry the flaps of protective foil from the opening. Except, here's the weird part. It's hard to do.
D. K. Wall:Why? Apparently, every penny of savings from shrinking the tab was reinvested in some of the stickiest substance known to man. It holds that foil like a vice.
D. K. Wall:The foil tears, rins, rips, and shreds into zillions of tatters that litter my bathroom sink. No matter how much I tug, a stubborn ring remains gripped around the lip.
D. K. Wall:Exhausted, I call it a victory. The bottle is open, even if bits of foil still cling to the rim and threaten to hitch a ride out with the first pour.
D. K. Wall:I need only clean up the mess. Return the scissors and tweezers to the drawer. Screw the cap back on to the mouthwash. Unscrew the cap. Rinse with mouthwash, and rescrew the cap because, well, I forgot what I was doing in the first place.
D. K. Wall:Sweep up the foil confetti strewn across my bathroom. And, of course, return to my office to grab a pad of paper and a pencil to share my latest misadventure.
D. K. Wall:So forgive me, dear reader. I am tired and have a headache. I would take an aspirin, but I don't have the energy to extract the little swab of cotton in the bottle.