There's No Bizness like Biz Bizness
I've been way too tight-assed lately, and then I remembered this.
Long, long ago, I see it was in 2012, I tossed off this little piece of fluff and promptly forgot about it. I’ve been searching through my archives lately, hoping to pull out of few decent old pieces you might never have seen and this one showed up.
It’s been so long ago I had no idea what that title even meant, but the whole thing made me laugh and I thought maybe it would do the same for you.
Welcome to my new subscribers. I’m so glad you’re here, though I can’t figure out why so many of you chose to arrive all on the same day! Not that I care. I’m just glad you’re here.
And I hope you’ll stick around, even after this.
First published at Ramona’s Voices, 2/24/2012:
Nothing earth-shaking here. Just wanted to share an advertising grab I'm finding even odder than most. Went looking for Biz Stain Fighter the other day and it wasn't easy to find. Three stores later I finally found a box sitting alone way back on a shelf. I'm trying to clean the rust stains from some old linen and lace pieces and people who do this sort of thing recommended Biz. I was busy reading the directions and wasn't paying much attention to what else was on the box, so I didn't fully comprehend the words in the big yellow band right away. Then I did.
I haven't tried it yet, so this is neither a recommendation nor a condemnation of the product inside. The truth is, I can't get past that box.
"25% more than 30 oz." Did I save money by buying this size? It doesn't say that. It's simply a statement, and not even a complete one. So what am I supposed to do with that information? It's things like this that drive me crazy. I don't get along well with numbers anyway, and I've always hated story problems, so it could be there's an important message here that I'm just missing.
If I were into whimsy (and I'm not saying I'm not) I might imagine that lonely box sitting way back on that dark shelf getting pretty bored. It might resort to doodling or playing number games, and maybe it got caught in the middle of one. Maybe someone came along before they could erase it.
Or maybe it was something less whimsical and more likely: Maybe the marketing team was brainstorming, and someone came up with this lame attempt at drawing customers to their product. Maybe they even went so far as to produce a prototype before someone said, "That doesn't even make sense".
But maybe it was too late, and some of the boxes actually got to the assembly line and onto the pallets and made it to the store shelves, where they just sat there, unnoticed, because apparently nobody really buys Biz anyway.
Whatever it is, I had to get this out. Now I can get on with my day. If it's going to drive you crazy too, I'm sorry. If it makes sense to you, if you get what they're going for, you're way too smart to be wasting your time reading this page. (But maybe you could take a minute to explain it. In private, so I don't look like such an idiot.)
The really scary thing is that after a few seconds I knew what they meant....only because I've become something of a math geek in the last two decades - I NEVER was before, to the always amusing brother and mother (at my expense). It's wrong math, however. 25% of 40 (the amount in the new bottle) is 10 oz, which would be the old bottle of 30. 25% of 30 is 30 times .25 (grabs calculator), so you should have a bottle of 37.5 ounces...oy, my head hurts, and this is geekiness overload for me. I'd rather graph a line..... The amusement to the family resulted from my mother asking the question, if 2x is 6, what's x?" To which I replied "a letter?" My brother laughing hysterically (he's 3 years younger) and my mother repeating the question - but louder and slower - and I still didn't see how x could be anything more than a letter....I should still be in therapy....a wait, I am.....
I feel like 25% more than 30oz is how I feel most Mondays. LOL