American jobs!

You know, when companies are run by idiots, even when they do things right, they do them wrong.

Take for example Procter & Gamble, the company so woke that it insulted the vast majority of its razor users and watched the division fall by $8 billion. 

One of its longstanding products is Safeguard soap, which was only available as a bar soap (as far as I know) in the pre-pandemic era. During the height of COVID mania, the company released large bottles of liquid hand soap under the Safeguard brand. I got some on a few occasions because hand soap, like hand sanitizer and toilet paper, went flying off the shelves at that time and you had to get what you could get.

Well, my wife really liked it, so despite my desire to continue to punish the company for its rudeness, I have been compelled to get some for use at the kitchen sink. But I note that on the bottle they say "Made with American Jobs." What, they suddenly love America? 

In fact, they love America so much they repeat the slogan on the back. (They seem to think that the US has one star on its flag, like Texas or Puerto Rico, but never mind.)

The thing is, I will never trust the company to do what it says again. So I wrote them the following e-mail: 

"I see that the Safeguard soap bottle says 'Made with American Jobs.' What does that mean? It doesn't mean it's made in America; it could just mean someone in America called the factory in Mexico or Canada to order more. I'd like some clarification on this, please."

A few days later I got a reply:

"Thanks for getting in touch with Safeguard. I'd be happy to help assist you today. All Safeguard products are made at facilities in the United States of America. Our liquid hand soap and body wash are made in Iowa City, hand sanitizer is made in California and Virginia, and bar soap is made in Ohio."

So there you go -- the products are actually made in America, but for some reason they couldn't just say that. Instead they had to use some unusual phrasing that made it sound like they were cheating. 

"Oh, yes, we mean an America, not that America. South America is sort of still America." 

"By American jobs we meant Hector in the mailroom, who sends the note to the plant in Xinjiang to order more." 

"We referred to Peter Jobs (no relation to Steve) who is working at the factory in Mexico City." 

Which just shows you that when you break trust with the people, they expect the worst. And it takes a long time to reestablish the respect you've lost. All our institutional leaders ought to bear that in mind. But it's probably too late.