While posting to the SAND twitter site on how great my two
graduate students are who successfully defended their doctoral dissertation
(Dr. Sebastian Cardona) and master thesis (Alden Griffin, MS), I came across
this tweet. “In partnership with
@UnitedWay we’re donating $1 milllion and 1 million rolls of #toiletpaper to
help those who need it most. And if you
post how you are able to #ShareASquare, we’ll donate $1 through June 1 (up to
$100,000) #Cottonelle.” Wow. I am not going to dis the effort here, but there
is soooo much here that it deserves unpacking.
Number one, “…in
partnership with United Way”. Let’s
start with the positive, so I am not sure who at Cottonelle decided that United
Way was the perfect partner for this, but come to find out UW IS a good place
to donate. It spends ~94% of every
dollar donated to services for the communities it serves so good on ya UW. But maybe they could just dump it on the
nursing homes. There are ~ 15,600
nursing homes in the US. That is 64
rolls of toilet paper for every nursing home in America. Just one suggestion.
Number two, “…what the
heck is Share a Square”!?!? Wow. What marketing ZOOM meeting generated
that. That just seems almost illegal in
its connotations. I mean, we are in the middle
of a social distancing crackdown, and people are “sharing a square”?! I am gonna let someone else tell me how that
works.
And finally, number three, “…to help those who need it most.”
So what do you think might be the criteria by which they decide “…those who need it most”. In an effort to make such choices fair and
balanced (I can’t believe I said that) maybe they could use an excellent piece
of research that was done by my doctoral student to assess submarine landslide “risk
of failure” and assess TP gifts on the basis of potential to fail, because
regarding the need for toilet paper, nobody wants to find themselves in a “failure”
situation. So let’s define the key
variables that can help us risk “…those
who need it most.”
I have come up with the following list and reasons why I
have included it. You can certainly
modify at will, but someone had to start somewhere.
--AGE (Impacts the ability to shop early)
--PROXIMITY TO A WALMART
--INCOME (Ability to purchase TP on the blackmarket)
--CHILDREN (Multiply need by about 37X for each child, or 57X for each child under 5 yrs of age - the snotty nose threshold, or for each male child over 13. I'm just saying...).
--CATS (Will play with and destroy TP)
--TEEN AGE GIRLS (BRA STUFFING, still needed during social isolation due to quality of laptop cameras)
--HISTORY OF HOARDING (ALREADY HAVE 200 ROLLS IN THE GARAGE LOCK OFF. You know who you are!)
--MEXICAN OR INDIAN FOOD CONSUMPTION (I will just let that one lie there with no further explanation).
--VEGETARIANS (see item above).
--PROXIMITY TO A WALMART
--INCOME (Ability to purchase TP on the blackmarket)
--CHILDREN (Multiply need by about 37X for each child, or 57X for each child under 5 yrs of age - the snotty nose threshold, or for each male child over 13. I'm just saying...).
--CATS (Will play with and destroy TP)
--TEEN AGE GIRLS (BRA STUFFING, still needed during social isolation due to quality of laptop cameras)
--HISTORY OF HOARDING (ALREADY HAVE 200 ROLLS IN THE GARAGE LOCK OFF. You know who you are!)
--MEXICAN OR INDIAN FOOD CONSUMPTION (I will just let that one lie there with no further explanation).
--VEGETARIANS (see item above).
So if we take all these and put them in a visual tool.
(Forgive me Sebastian, but you did say this morning that you felt your major
contribution was “…the methodology and the broad application thereof” J.) See results below.
I am prepared to provide this tool free of
charge to Cottonelle because a gift like this should not be left to chance.
Mountain Pig…out.
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