An Open Letter to the Johnson & Johnson Company

Dear Sirs:

What evil, heartless, mindless, sadistic bastard at your company is responsible for the design of the Band-Aid®? I’m sorry if that was a little harsh. Let me try again. Did it ever occur to you imbeciles, that when you’re bleeding like you just walked off the set of a Quentin Tarantino movie, it’s next to impossible to apply a @#$%& Band-Aid to the wound!

Please understand gentlemen that I do not write to carp and whine, but rather to dialog with you in a spirit of constructive criticism; to provide useful feedback from consumer to manufacturer. Therefore, in that same spirit, let me enumerate all the ways your product sucks: First, we have the design of the miserable, little paper wrapper that only a neurosurgeon with microscopic instruments could successfully open, but only with much difficulty. Someone who, with their one good hand, is grappling with a towel in order to stem the flow of blood on the wounded hand, cannot easily grasp the teeny, tiny little flaps of paper you supply to pull the package apart. I’m sorry, I must apologize again: did I say, “Cannot easily?” I meant, “Can’t at all you stupid jerks!”

Next, we have the waxy, white strips of paper that keep the adhesive from sticking to the paper package. Congratulations gentlemen, this is the one facet of your product that works as designed! The adhesive does not stick to the paper wrapper. It will only stick to itself, or to the finger that isn’t gushing blood, or to the towel, your pant leg, the dog. What it also doesn’t stick to is the wounded finger. Blood completely foils the adhesive properties of this clever product, thereby necessitating another fruitless struggle to open yet another bandage.

Now, if by some miracle you survive the drop in blood pressure long enough to fumble this most basic of ligatures onto your hemorrhaging extremity, you’re then faced with having to apply six or seven more because, lastly, the sterile pad which is supposed to dress the wound is about as absorbent as glass. But this is all nitpicking. At least there will be a bloody pile of ripped and mangled Band-Aid wrappers lying on the floor for you to land on as you collapse in shock from blood loss.

In fairness, I confess that it may be possible that I have not fully divined the nature of your business model. It could be that my comments are way off base. I naturally assumed you were engaged in the manufacture and marketing of health products. It just occurred to me that your plan is really to slowly kill off the majority of mankind by supplying inferior first-aid products thereby leaving the remaining cowed population so addled and debilitated that they actually prefer Splenda® to sugar. Hmmm…in that case, I must say you’re succeeding brilliantly!