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A project to make businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it. By Mark Hurst. |
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Previous: (For fun) Indonesian greeting cards | Main | Next: Gift card
February 15, 2006 12:03 AM
Broken: Therapy pillow
Reader Timylie writes in:
This is a pillow i bought at Bed, Bath & Beyond.
The pillow is supposed to be a "Therapy Pillow." However, the warning label says "WARNING: Do Not Use For Sleeping. For Decorative Purposes Only."
Sleep is therapeutic, so if I can't sleep on this pillow- it isn't a very useful therapy pillow!
Yup, I got one of those too, and noticed that same disclaimer.
You can decorate your head with it, but you have to stay awake.
I use a pillow similar to that one when I sleep. Have I been putting myself at risk?!
Why wouldn't you be able to sleep using that pillow? The tag should have a good reason.
The reason for the warning, is that the pillow conforms to any shape, sort of like a beanbag chair or memory foam. If you were to sleep face down in the pillow, you could actually suffocate yourself. Although as we know from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, that's a form of therapy too.
Perhaps this pillow would be useful for "Death Therapy" proposed by psychiatrist Richard Dreyfuss to patient Bill Murray in "What about Bob."
Heck, I bought one of those, saw the label, and CUT IT OFF!!!!! If I want to sleep on the dang thing (which I have, hehehe) I am going to!
Never do that again, Bob.
As for the pillow, someone probally suffocated or nearly suffcated on the pillow so they had to put a label on it. Like the do not attempts on car commecrials that show an SUV flying out of a volcano, at the bottom it says do not attempt. Funny part is, is that line wasn't on the commcerial the first time I saw it. Some idiot must've tried to do that.
So someone must've almost killed themselves on one of those pillows. Unless they were tryign to commit suciede and failed, and decided to sue for damages.
Sounds like a disclaimer to me.
Don't forget that lady who won millions in a lawsuit after burning herself with take-out coffee while she was driving.
If you can litigate over coffee there might be grounds for a pillow case...
I have one of these, and I say not broken. The therapy isn't to sleep on it, but more to 'squish' it, kind of like a stress ball.
And also, don't forget the guy who sued the makers of his RV for not telling him he couldn't set it on cruise control on the highway and go in back to make a cup of coffee.
No joke, that guy got half of a million dollars and a new RV.
"If you can litigate over coffee there might be grounds for a pillow case..." Pillow case. hehe.
Coffe + cruise control = Stella Awards named after the lady who sued McDonald's because she didn't know coffee was hot.
But BlastYoBoots, squishing is also not using it for a decorative purpose. For decorative purposes only.
But BlastYoBoots, squishing is also not using it for a decorative purpose. For decorative purposes only.
I believe a pillow being 'squishy' is very 'decorative'. A visitor sees them and thinks, "how thoughtful, putting things for a guest to squish". However, how many guests have time to 'stop and squish the pillows'?
What's really broken is the price. I think it was... $40? For a bean filled pillow?
I just learned from a friend: If you sleep on one of these and it breaks, you can inhale the polyurithane pellets (or whatever's in there), and if you inhale too many at once you can suffocate.
Heck, I'd choose squishy over life any day!
I heard from a coworker that her neighbor's ex- boyfriend tried to kill someone by holding one of those pillows over the face, so this must be true. And once, at band camp this guy inhaled some .... AAAGGHHHH! make it stop!
This may sound retarded, stick the pillow between legs. They are the perfect sleeping pillow for your legs!
OOH! Therapy pillow, I just have to have one. I'll sleep on it while burning my aromatherapy gel candles that spit out scented flames that burn down the house with me in it.
Sorry guys, but you need to check your coffee facts before spouting nonsense. McDonalds coffee used to be served in styrofoam cups at scalding temperatures. It too 700 people to get 3rd degree burns before McDonalds started serving coffee in safer cups or double cups. You try getting 3rd degree burns to your groin area and see what you do.
http://caoc.com/CA/index.cfm?event=showPage&pg=facts
Jonathan
I think the therapy pillow should be advertised as a hand therapy pillow. Sleeping on the pillow means the pillow gets dirty faster as our face sweats a lot when we are asleep. I have a few of these pillows and they are kept in the living room and people play with them with their hands only or toss them around a bit. Not a dog toy. (^: My cat does not sleep on the pillows for some reason. Maybe she can read ? (^:
Jonathan
Don't forget that lady who won millions in a lawsuit after burning herself with take-out coffee while she was driving.
She wasn't driving. The car wasn't moving at the time. She suffered third-degree burns, required skin grafts, and spent a week in the hospital. She asked McDonald's for $800 to compensate her for her medical bills. McDonald's refused.
A Mcdonald's executive testified at trial that the company knew its coffee sometimes caused serious burns, decided not to warn customers of that fact, and had no plans to change its procedures to prevent burns. That's a textbook definition of negligence.
And the jury did find the woman 20% responsible for her injuries.
But hey, don't let facts get in the way of your ignorance.
BWAH HA HA!
Interesting.
I heard some guy once sued a fast food restaurant because their fries upset his digestive system and made him pass gas more often.
That McDonald's coffee was extra hot is a feature, not a bug. Or in the local parlance, "not broken". Hot coffee tastes better and if you're picking up takeout on the way to work, you want the coffee to *still* be hot when you get where you're going, which means you want it to initially be hotter than an in-restaurant serving temperature. Faulting the coffee for being hot enough to cause serious burns if misused is like faulting kitchen knives for being sharp enough to cause serious cuts if misused. The McDonald's executives were right not to have changed their policy earlier.
Even 700 prior incidents is frankly not compelling given the number of happy customers there must have been. McDonalds serves hundreds of millions of cups of coffee per year, so we're talking about reducing the harm in a literally one-in-a-million accident at the cost of making what was a Good Experience a merely Mediocre Experience for millions of customers.
Glen, what part of 3rd degree burns and skin grafts do you not understand? Many customers, even a great majority of customers, not being injured does not absolve a company from negligence.
If my car's wheel falls off because of a tie rod that improves handling in 99.9 percent of cases, but wheel failure in .1, and the manufacturer is aware of this, but continues its practice anyway, is that manufacturer not liable?
Would you not agree that a customer has a reasonable expectation of not needing a skin graft from a coffee spill?
And for all the people shocked at the payout, it was reduced on appeal.
But that pillow is so great for my neck that I just screw the label cause what could the pillow possibly do to you. It's a pillow.
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Previous: (For fun) Indonesian greeting cards | Main | Next: Gift card
Therapy through osmosis like Garfield reading/learning through osmosis. I've also wondered how therapeutic chakra rocks can be. It's not the advertising that's broken but the buyer.
Posted by: Confused Shopper at February 15, 2006 12:15 AM