By Lee Scott
My husband walked into the kitchen the other day and asked in a very concerned voice, “What are you doing?”
He was reacting to the fact that I was standing there with a serrated knife and cutting board slicing off the top of my hand lotion bottle.
I responded to him in a frustrated voice, “I am attempting to get all the lotion out of this pump bottle.”
Then I explained the problem to him. The company that makes the hand lotion, which I really like and have been using for years, has replaced the “easy to use” plastic bottle with a new one. Instead of the normal squeeze top bottle they have replaced it with a pump bottle, and it is not a normal pump. It is all one continuous plastic bottle. You cannot even pull the pump out to use it on another bottle, or unscrew the top, it is all one piece. The pump works perfectly well until you get down to the last 20% of the product. At that point, the squirt pump cannot get the remaining lotion. Hence the need for a serrated knife and cutting board.
My spouse suggested I pitch the bottle and buy a different brand. But at that moment, I decided it was unacceptable to throw it out when it still held a lot of the lotion. After all, I paid for 100 percent of the product in that bottle, not 80 percent. There must be a lot of people like me who want to get their money’s worth. Am I the only one who turns their shampoo bottles and cleansers upside down to get the most product out? It seems like the plastic industry is making it harder and harder for us. Why not make it easier?
Instead, I am in the kitchen cutting the top off the lotion bottle. As he stood there wincing, he assured me he would be available to drive me to the emergency room after I cut off a finger. But after the top was cut, even he was shocked when he saw the amount of lotion sitting in the bottom of the bottle. Talk about waste.
After I finished scooping out the last of the lotion having successfully managed not to inflict bodily harm on myself, I decided it was time to go online and write to the company. I explained my displeasure at their new packaging and emphasized that I did not appreciate paying for a product that I could not easily access.
I am not sure if my complaint is going to do any good, but like my husband said, maybe it is time to look for a new hand lotion.
