Nowadays, you keep your product on the shelves for as long as possible (and maybe even throw in a discount, thus preventing a potential refund/return). I’ve worked for a number of companies that did this all the time. They kept up an appearance of feigned innocence and ignorance, swearing they didn’t know that there was a reoccurring problem. One place I knew of even re-sold the rejected products at a steep discount, regardless of the number of times it had been returned.
In the good old days – back in the 60′s and 70′s – drug companies and such were so concerned about bad press about their products (like the Bayer and Tylenol scares over poisonings and tamperings), that they would immediately pull items off the shelves to prevent any kind of accidental death or injury from their product. Sales would literally plummet the moment anyone worried about an irresponsible manufacturer’s product on the market. But now, people seem to shrug it off, because the media tends to blow things out of proportion too often – thus numbing your senses into oblivion.
In the movie, The Insider, Russell Crowe, who plays a whistle blower for a cigarette company, expresses his disgust at how his bosses actually manufacture addictive poisons to be put into cigarettes. He then goes on to express how impressed he was with his former employer’s immediate response to news reports of deaths from tainted aspirin tablets, back in the 70′s. Back then, some companies actually went out of their way to make sure their products were 100% safe for consumption. Now, you’re lucky if they even tell you what’s in it.
Sigh…
About Ginger
About me...let's see...
I guess I'm just another tree-huggin', commie, Cheetos-eating, pajama-wearing, unemployed blogger.
I'm anxious and vainly optimistic about where the country is headed, and openly dreaded the day Bush ever came into political office...I''m not happy about having a party filled with spineless "oh we need to cherish the blue dog dems" ...but I'm also glad that we are finally moving away from the cliff we were all teetering on for the past decade.
What bothers me most is the fact that too few people today understand how incredibly dangerous our government has become or how unreliable and weak our news sources are. I'm not just talking about Fox. I'm talking about the bulk of the mainstream media. It's not liberal - and it's certainly not fair or balanced. My kind of news reporting was the kind I grew up in the 70s, and clearly remember a time when the so-called liberal media was all about reporting the cold, hard facts, filled with investigative journalism, and anchors or reporters who refused to do fluff pieces - like cats stuck in trees, water-skiing squirrels, and Darwin-award-winning idiots who would do anything to make themselves into a news story. Being a reporter meant something more noble than a fat paycheck. You did your job because you wanted to get the truth out there. Now? You're mostly smeared or called a tin-foiled-hat-wearing lunatic of you find out - and expose - any kind of government or corporate corruption.
The upside of today's kind of media? Bloggers are a new breed of journalists - ready to hit the streets...err digital webspace... and have helped get a president elected, and a fascist dictatorship out of power.
