Monday, October 17, 2011

Conspiracy theorist

I'm not usually one to indulge in conspiracy theory, but I had a wacky thought pass through my head and thought it might be fun to indulge and see where it goes.

So, I'm sitting there washing my hands in the work restroom and notice the little pump bottle of hand soap sitting in the corner. There's currently all of 1/4" of soap left in the bottom and the pump won't suck it out. So, whomever the fairy in charge of replenishing our restroom supplies is, has placed a new container of soap on the counter for us to use. The old soap sits there all fore lorn and wondering why we don't use the rest of it. I'm betting it will eventually get tossed in the trash rather than anyone taking the time to pour out the rest of its contents and use them.

Now here is where my brains goes wacky. I begin thinking that some middle management bean counter in the soft soap world headquarters had a brain storm one day to raise revenues. So, he pitches to his boss that they should shorten the pick-up straws by 1/8". Here's his rationale- people are lazy. They won't necessarily notice the small amount of extra liquid left in the bottle since the pump really never emptied all of the contents anyway. Even if they do notice, they'll be too apathetic or lazy to do anything other than bitch about the fact that there's still soap left in the bottle.

Now the middle manager is figuring most people will end up throwing the balance of the bottle away without going to the extra work of unscrewing the cap and dumping it out or into the next bottle. Obviously, that would be too much work. Additionally, since consumers tend to be brand loyal, they will now be buying the soap at a faster rate because they've just tossed more in the trash. So, he sells the idea to his boss that he can trim the cost of the pick up tube now that they've decreased the size and in turn increase the sale rate to the customer because they'll have to buy the product more often because they're getting less usable material in each bottle. Middle manager gets a nice promotion or big bonus for adding money on both sides of the company's bottom line. Everyone is happy and they've just fleeced the consumer who has no clue about anything.

I told you it was a crazy thought. This could never really happen. Right?

1 comment:

Snakebite said...

Wait, what is the name of the soap company you work for???