I really, really want to complain about something, but I have a personal rule.  It started when my son went to college and, during those first weeks of adjustment, too often called with complaints.  I finally told him that for every bad thing, he had to first tell me something good.  That’s my rule.  So here goes.  Today’s subject is packaging.

The good.  I keep reusable bags my backseat and have trained myself to take them with me into the supermarket.  The bad.  If I have more groceries than bags, I ask for paper, which I then reuse to collect trash in my house.  Blithely, the bagger puts my excess groceries in plastic bags.  Four of them.

The good.  Nordstrom’s clerk asks if she can add my purchase to the bag I already have.  The bad.  A single tiny SD card arrives in the mail from an online vendor in a huge box.

The good.  Air pillow bags.  The bad.  Packing peanuts.

And now, what I really wanted to tell you about today.

The good?  We buy bottled water for the sake of portability, and, as wasteful as that may be, at least our brand uses 30% less plastic.  Kudos to Poland Springs for going green.

And the bad?  Pill bottles.  The vitamins I reordered just arrived, and take a look.

See the top bottle, the big one with the pills just over halfway up?  And the second, smaller one, barely one-third filled?  Both bottles are still sealed; look closely and you’ll see the plastic wrap circling the lid.  Neither bottle even has cotton between the pills and the lid, like the manufacturer doesn’t care to try to cover up what he’s done.  And it isn’t just this brand.  The problem is endemic.

Why, for so few pills, are these bottles so big?  Is it to fill the shelf with one’s own product?  Or simply to justify the price?

Whatever, pfrrrrrrrr.  That’s a raspberry.

Hey.  Thanks for listening.  I’ll do the same for you, if you have a gripe.  But first the good.  🙂