An open letter to Colgate Palmolive

I'm in the backyard mucking around. I reach into a pile of leaves and encounter something warm and slimy. I scream and recoil. Slug nest? Some sort of mold? Who knows and who cares! I do a frantic grass wipe before high-tailing it to the house.

My hands are pretty filthy underneath the goo-streaks and I dither for a split second at the screen door. I opt to use my dirty but relatively un-slimed pinky to slide it open. At the sink, I carefully use the same digit to turn on the water. Then I put my forearm atop the bottle of Softsoap and give it an awkward albeit solid pump.

Instead of a nice thick bead of soap, I get that telltale gloppy fart noise. I furiously pump the bottle. More farts, no soap--just a few useless bubbles. I lean in to inspect the bottle and see that there is plenty of product left--enough, in fact, to wash my hands five times over, but it's not coming out.

Why? Because the little plastic pump suction tube ends three-eighths of an inch from the bottom of the goddamn bottle!

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Dear Colgate Palmolive:

Due to the cutesy little shortened suction tube trick you miserable bastards are pulling with the Softsoap, I'm paying for 7.5 ounces of soap of which only about seven are usable.

This is no time for some insufferable Boy Scout "Be Prepared" speech, so don't you shake your heads and mutter about your economy refills. I buy the disposable soap dispensers for a reason. I'm running a Utility Grade operation here. I've got kids running in and out all day long washing their hands. Do you have any idea what that dispenser looks like after seven ounces of use? It's smudged and dented and shitty.

Oh sure, I could save up all the bottles with their half-ounce of unused soap and try to empty them into the least beat-up bottle (and you can bet that I'd be having to get my finger in there and pop out the dents and then scrub the pump top and bottle as well and it still wouldn't look like new).

Yeah right.

Like I'm going to dick around cleaning used soap bottles and then upending them on the vanity, leaning them between the Kleenex box and Lavoris bottle like some half-ass suburban housewife Jenga game. And if I did get it all propped up (not like I ever tried or anything) and went to put the laundry in the dryer while the soap drip-drip-dripped, you just know that the whole operation would fall over and Softsoap would go everywhere. Or it wouldn't be stacked right and half the soap would ooze down the side of the recipient bottle (that I just cleaned). It'd probably get on the mirror somehow as well (not that I know or anything).

Say I just shitcan the bottle. What of that undispensed soap in there? Does it effectively make the recyclable bottle unrecyclable? Will it muck up the recycling process? I don't want to screw up everything like the guy dumping his used oil down the drain and contaminating up half of Lake Erie.

I'm done with your Softsoap and its dicky little suction tube. I'm off to the land of 99-cent Lucky SuperSoft, which clocks in at 16.9 ounces and, courtesy of a suction tube that goes all the way to the bottom, I'll enjoy every ounce of it.

Kiss my ass goodbye, shitbags.

Love,

Erin

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