Why Do Pirates Love Parrots? (27 page)
Read Why Do Pirates Love Parrots? Online
Authors: David Feldman
W
hen fate takes us to the turnpikes of New Jersey, a state where service stations, by law, must provide full service, we always admire the gas jockeys at the rest stops. They set the automatic clip on the gas pump handle while fueling and run around from car to car, free as birds. But when we stop at a self-service station, we are stuck with our hands fastened to the pump handle tighter than a Jennifer Lopez Oscar dress. Why is there discrimination against us self-service habitués?
We contacted two major oil companies and they passed the buck rather quickly. “It’s not up to us,” they replied. As Don Turk, a spokesperson for Mobil Oil Corporation put it, “The general rule is that the use of these devices is regulated by the local or state fire codes.”
Sure enough, automatic fuel clips are outlawed in many states. The National Fire Protection Association endorsed the safety of particular brands and models, and in those states where clips are legal, it is common for these models only to be permitted. But even in states where clips are allowed, relatively few service stations use them in practice. Gasoline is expensive enough—why do service stations have to torture us with manual labor?
We asked this question of Paul Fiori, executive vice president of the Service Station Dealers of America, and he wouldn’t buy conspiracy theories. He wasn’t sure, but speculated that fuel clips tend to break, some customers don’t know how to use them properly, and the end result is usually more expense for the dealer.
Citgo service station owner Maurice Helou, of Lyndhurst, Ohio, backs up Fiori:
I have been a gasoline dealer for 25 years. There are many procedures a self-service gasoline customer should practice that may result in a request from the cashier at the store, such as “pull up to the next pump,” “no smoking please,” etc.
People do not like to follow instructions, requests, or commands from the “lowly cashier.” Since the gasoline nozzle and its assembly is a piece of equipment subject to failure and misuse, the result of which would cause a spill, by disabling the clip, the consumer is forced to control the flow of gasoline into their tank, avoiding a costly spill and its resulting complaint from the consumer.
Most fire departments require the customers to control the gas nozzle. Take away the clip and that’s one less request.
Bah humbug! In our experience, the shutoff mechanism always works, and at a self-service station, it’s still up to the consumer to place the nozzle of the pump into fuel tank. Based on some of the folks we’ve seen at gas stations, we’d trust an inanimate clip more than humans to prevent spills. When we challenged Helou with these assertions, he swatted them away with gusto:
At the tip underside of the nozzle spout there is a small hole. When the gas tank is full, gas backsplashes into the little hole, which triggers the gas nozzle to shut off and release the clip, therefore stopping the flow of gasoline. If there is a malfunction anywhere in the process, the nozzle may not shut off and gas will continue to flow. That’s why it is necessary for the customer to remain with the pump when filling the tank.
It wouldn’t be necessary to remove the clip and force the customer to stay with the pump if they would simply comply. Customers are time-starved and multitask when buying gas. They set the nozzle to pump their gas and then they use the restroom, or buy products in the store while leaving the pump unattended.
When a spill occurs, then it is a hassle to collect the sale. Even when customers are manning the pump, if they attempt to “top off” after the nozzle automatically shuts off, they can overfill and cause a spill.
We spoke to Pat Moricca, president of the Gasoline Retailers Association of Florida, who confirmed that the spill issue was the paramount reason for disabling automatic fuel clips. If enough gasoline is spilled, the HazMat crews from the local environmental agency must be called, leading to lost sales. If a customer trots in with a lit cigarette, the consequences can be worse.
The reason why you see automatic clips used at full-service pumps is because the service station worker can wash the windows or check the air pressure of tires while fueling, but if there is a malfunction, he’s in the vicinity to troubleshoot. Ultimately, the disabling of fuel clips is there to force the customer to stay with the car.
And remember Paul Fiori complaining about fuel clips breaking? What causes this problem? According to Louis F. Ferrara Jr., a Sunoco station owner in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the fault lay not with the clips, but with the customers who engage them:
Though it sounds crazy, customers forget that the pump handle is in the gas tank. They pull the car away, causing damage to the pump. We’d rather they hold the handle until they are finished.
Submitted by Jeffrey Joyner of Raleigh, North Carolina.
T
his Imponderable was posed by Marty Flowers, a woman with a name usually associated with men. Perhaps her experiences as a female Marty made her wonder:
What happens if a woman uses it? Is it really just for very short hair? If a woman has really short hair, could she use this product successfully, or would she hate the results? If a guy has long hair, should he not use this product? So shouldn’t it be called “Just for Short Hair”?
You’ve got the right idea, Marty. Just For Men comes from Combe Incorporated, the same folks that bring you Grecian Formula. If you care to blaze new trails, Marty, feel free to try Just For Men. It won’t do any damage, except to eradicate gray hairs, just as it’s safe for men to use Secret deodorant (despite the harrowing knowledge that Secret was “made for a woman”). Would it hurt men to smoke Virginia Slims? Whoops, bad example. But at least cigarettes are equal opportunity offenders—they will harm both men and women!
Grecian Formula does not contain dye and compensates for the lost melanin that results in white or gray hair. It is applied over many weeks, and the user’s hair darkens gradually over time. The melanin in black hair is no different in hue from a blond’s melanin—there’s just more of it in the dark hair (so chances are, it will take longer for Grecian Formula to restore a black-haired user’s natural hair color than it would a redhead’s).
Just For Men is a more conventional hair colorant, which comes in eleven different shades. It is rinsed out after five minutes and, with luck, achieves the desired result after one application.
We don’t want to give the impression that the differences between Just For Men and women’s coloring products are nonexistent, but to emphasize that Just For Men’s advertising and marketing is clearly designed to assuage men’s defensiveness and skittishness about using coloring products. Stress is put on the elimination of gray hair rather than the change of color. Like Grecian Formula, Just For Men “targets the gray” rather than trying to convince men to frost their hair or change from brunette to blond. Many women’s coloring agents are marketed as fun fashion statements, even ones meant for use on a special occasion. But Just For Men is aimed squarely and dourly at getting out the gray and retaining the original hair color, as Ralph Marburger, marketing director for men’s haircolor at Combe Inc. explains:
Most men who think about using a hair color just want to get rid of their gray hair and not change the color of the hair that has not gone white yet, because they want the result to look like their own hair color. Just For Men is a “Deposit-Only” Hair color, which means that it does not bleach out hair’s natural pigments and then deposits color molecules—it just deposits color. Since it does not bleach the hair, the only visible change to the user’s hair color is the change from white hair to colored hair. The color of the previously pigmented hair stays virtually unchanged (unless, of course, someone with light hair uses a very dark shade).
How else is Just For Men designed for guys? Let us count the ways:
1.
Just For Men is placed in the shaving and grooming aisles of stores, rather than in the land of Clairol and L’Oréal, an area as baffling to most men as the cookie section of the supermarket is to Marilu Henner. Subliminally, this also assures men that use of the product is part of their grooming and not a flight of vanity.
2.
Men are not usually as patient as women when using cosmetics. Just For Men takes about two minutes to comb in and about five minutes to set, compared to the usual 30 to 40 minutes for women’s packaged hair coloring products.
3.
Unlike many women’s products, Just For Men contains no ammonia, which, according to Marburger, “can damage hair and smell bad.”
4.
Although Just For Men isn’t advertised specifically for men with short hair, there is less coloring in a Just For Men bottle than most women’s dyes.
5.
Combe also offers a Just For Men product for eliminating the gray in sideburns, beards, and mustaches, designed especially for coarse hair.
Never one to cede dominance in any area of hair coloring, Clairol has introduced Natural Instincts for Men (nothing says “Natural” more than artificial coloring, evidently), the only direct competitor to Grecian Formula and Just For Men in the mass market. Like Just For Men, Natural Instincts contains no ammonia and boasts reduced peroxide compared to Clairol’s women’s products.
Combe, playing tit-for-tat, has introduced Just 5, a product marketed to women, whose benefits and technology sound awfully close to Just For Men. We spoke to a consumer resources consultant at Combe who admitted that Just 5 hasn’t caught on with women as they had hoped. Perhaps women cannot believe that a product that works so quickly can be effective? No time drain, no gain?
That’s why we’re happy to announce that some women are enterprising enough to cross the gender divide and use Just For Men. According to the same consumer resources consultant at Combe, they sure do, especially for touching up gray hair at their temples. As far as we know, none of these women spontaneously combusted.
Submitted by Marty Flowers of Weirton, West Virginia.
S
itting next to the Imponderables Central keyboard is a bottle of CVS “generic” ibuprofen tablets. Under “Drug Facts” on the label, it states that there is one active ingredient: Ibuprofen 200 mg. Coming after sections called Uses, Warnings, Directions, and Other Information, is a list of Inactive Ingredients: colloidal silicon dioxide, corn starch, croscarmellose sodium, hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, iron oxides, microcrystalline cellulose, stearic acid, and titanium dioxide. As the U.S. Food and Drug Administration defines it, active ingredients are any component of a drug that is intended to
furnish pharmacological activity or other direct effect in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, or to affect the structure of any function of the body of humans or other animals.
Inactive ingredients are
any
component of a drug product that isn’t an active ingredient.
The FDA has approved almost 800 chemical agents as inactive ingredients for drugs, and although these inactive ingredients must be labeled for topical preparations and eye treatments, no such requirement is issued for drugs taken orally. Most of the major pharmaceutical companies list the inactive ingredients, but even some of these companies leave out “trade secret” components that may tip other companies to a competitive advantage of a particular drug.
If inactive ingredients don’t help in the treatment of the condition of a patient, why are they included at all? Most commonly, they add to ease of manufacture of the drug, the stability of the finished pill or liquid (so that the tablet or capsule holds together), and its palatability to the user. Some ingredients, such as starches, are often used just as a filler, to keep the components of the drug solid. Dyes are added to improve the appearance of the drug, and sometimes to give it a distinctive brand identity. Inactive ingredients, also known as “excipients,” are designed not to interfere with the delivery of the active ingredients to the end user.
The ingredients included in our ibuprofen tablets turn out to have these benign purposes. The scary sounding croscarmellose sodium is not toxic, and helps tablets to dissolve in the stomach. The silica and stearic acid are used as lubricants so that the tablet doesn’t stick to manufacturing equipment. Cellulose is used as a binder to hold the tablets together, as well as filler. Titanium dioxide is used as a thickener.
But not everyone is so sanguine about the safety of inactive ingredients. The American Academy of Pediatrics has long lobbied for compulsory listing of all inactive ingredients on prescription and over-the-counter drug labels. Pediatricians report that saccharine and aspartame, used as sweeteners in chewable tablets for children, can induce headaches. Some children respond adversely to dyes found as coatings of pills; without labels, parents can’t easily tell whether their children will react.
Adverse reactions to inactive ingredients are not confined to children. About 20 percent of all drugs contain lactose (milk sugar), used as a filler or a diluting agent in tablets and capsules, and to provide bulk to powdered remedies. Those with dairy allergies or extreme lactose intolerance can suffer from side effects worse than the conditions the pills are meant to treat. Many folks are allergic to corn, and might be shocked to learn that their adverse reaction to some drugs might be caused not by the active ingredients, but by starch used as filler.
So despite the adjective “inactive,” one of these ingredients can “get busy” for the unlucky few. If you worry about this happening to you, consult the
Physicians’ Desk Reference,
which usually has a complete listing of inactive ingredients.
Submitted by Scott Schuetze of Green Bay, Wisconsin.