Is this guy what the Brits call a wanker?

Physicians in the UK don't make as much as docs in the US. Most of them work for the National Health Service (NHS), where a junior doctor may make as little as £35,000 a year - the equivalent of about $44K. Hard to imagine any doctor putting up with that here! (Salaries in general, across many professions, are lower in the UK.) But I don't believe that NHS doctors have to work crazy hours, and I do believe that they're allowed to moonlight, taking more lucrative gigs on their days off. 

But that apparently wasn't good enough for one fellow. 

Dr Daniel Coventry, 34, was supposed to be off work at the taxpayer's expense with a suspected virus but instead he was offering facial fillers, thread facelifts and anti-wrinkle jabs at a private clinic in Brighton. (Source: Daily Mail)

His grift was discovered for both reasons old-school - taking a suspicious amount of sick time - and predictably modern - bragging on social media. And it was enough to earn him a short-term suspension of his medical license for gross unprofessional misconduct. Covenry was sent to medical-world Coventry, as it were. 

He apologized for his unbecoming conduct "and confessed to blaming his behavior on NHS 'failing.'"

Amazingly, his initial defense was that he hadn't bothered to read the rules and regulation about side hustles, implying that this was somewhat the fault of the NHS for not doing a good enough job with onboarding new doctors.

Even if one hasn't read the rules and regulations, even if one pointed one's finger at one's employer for not making sure one knew these rules and regulations, how could anyone think lying about being sick and using the paid time off to work another job is the right thing to do? 

We're not talking about an occasional mental health day when you sit around reading and eating bonbons, or taking a nice, long walk to clear the cobwebs, or binge-watching Breaking Bad. We're talking about someone getting paid by the NHS to work with sick people, while also getting (better) paid for working with unsick folks who want to Botox their wrinkles into oblivion and get themselves some big old puffy Kardashian lips. And are willing and able to pay big bucks (big pounds?) out of pocket for the privilege.

Fortunately, Coventry - who is an Oxford-educated MD, thus at least reasonably intelligent - now claims to have seen the light.  

In a statement Coventry said he now accepted 'not having a leg to stand on' at the 2023 hearing and vowed in future to be 'toeing the line no matter what the policy is.' He also said he would 'err on the side of caution' if he was unwell at work in future and follow hospital rules on treating patients.

He explained: 'My attitude during that hearing was overly defensive and on reflection I am quite embarrassed about this. I think that the depth to which I value being a doctor led to an automatic desire to bat away criticism of my behaviour rather than accept responsibility for what is such an obvious error of judgement.

'During that hearing I focused too much on my perception of the failures of the trust [which runs the NHS] and not enough on my personal failure to familiarise myself with the rules of the trust. Whilst I believe that the trust could have done more to support me, I also believe that I should have done more to support myself and absolutely did bear the responsibility to do so.'

He added: 'The judgment was the beginning of my realisation that what I had done was serious and that labelling it merely a mistake from lack of knowledge of the rule was insufficient to remedy the situation.

He goes on to state that it was only being suspended that got him to recognize "just how poor my behaviour had been." And that he's taken the opportunity of the suspension for "personal growth," including taking a free online course on Medical Professionalism, which gave him a "better understanding"of dishonesty.

Seems quite weasel-wordy to me. Quite.

The guy's in his thirties and had to take a course in Medical Professionalism to learn what dishonesty is?

I don't know if the Brits use the word 'duh,' but 'duh.'

And I'm pretty sure Daniel Coventry, MD, is what the Brits would call a wanker. 

People are weird. And some make a living at it.

The Internet has unleashed all sorts of creativity. Some of it's non-monetized (e.g., Pink Slip), and some of it wildly money-making.

Oh, Matt Farley isn't wildly money-making. He's not up there with, say Kylie Jenner - or is it Kendall? - in terms of raking in oodles for being famous for being famous. Still, he's making about $200K a year by releasing thousands of nonsense songs on streaming platforms. So far, he's posted more than 24,000 songs, sometimes producing 50 a day. 

Matt Farley has released thousands of songs with the goal of producing a result to match nearly anything anybody could think to search for. (Source: NY Times)

For Brett Martin, who wrote the Times article, the anything his anybody could think to search for was his name. And, damned, if there isn't a song entitled "Brett Martin, You a Nice Man, Yes."

Some of the songs Farley concocts name-check celebrities (or near celebrities like Martin, who shares his name with a former MLB player and an Australian squash player), and often pulls together tunes grouped according to themes. He releases them under pseudonyms - the Brett Martin song was from Papa Razzi and the Photogs.

Papa Razzi and the Photogs is only one of about 80 pseudonyms Farley uses to release his music. As the Hungry Food Band, he sings songs about foods. As the Guy Who Sings Songs About Cities & Towns, he sings the atlas. He has 600 songs inviting different-named girls to the prom and 500 that are marriage proposals. He has an album of very specific apologies; albums devoted to sports teams in every city that has a sports team; hundreds of songs about animals, and jobs, and weather, and furniture, and one band that is simply called the Guy Who Sings Your Name Over and Over.

While Farley has a lot going on, it's his scatalogical offerings, his "poop songs," that have proven the most lucrative. These are released under two names, the Toilet Bowl Cleaners and the Odd Man Who Sings About Poop, Puke and Pee. With titles like "Butt Cheeks Butt Cheeks Butt Cheeks!”, “I Need a Lot of Toilet Paper to Clean the Poop in My Butt”, and "Poop In My Fingernails," Farley has made about $469K from plays on Spotify and other streaming platforms. 

While he doesn't bring in much per individual stream, when a number like "Poop In My Fingers" gets 4.4 million (and counting) streams on Spotify alone, it all adds up.

Farley, who lives in Danvers, Mass. and graduated from Providence College, uses the money he makes for his songs to "help fund his multiple other creative endeavors."

These include his work as a legit musician; a podcast that recaps Celtics game; and quirky movies starring friends and family, and himself, which he makes on a shoestring budget.

He's a big believer in the creative urge:

His theory is that every idea, no matter its apparent value, must be honored and completed. An idea thwarted is an insult to the muse and is punished accordingly.

Well, I'm all for creativity, but I'm not a believer in any way, shape or form that every idea deserves an airing. There are a lot of really terrible ideas out there.  

“If you reject your own ideas, then the part of the brain that comes up with ideas is going to stop,” he said. “You just do it and do it and do it, and you sort it out later.”

Me? I'd be happy if people rejected the really terrible ones that are their very own. Maybe that would get them to stop.

Still, it's pretty amazing that Matt Farley, freelance oddball, is making a pretty good living off weird little ideas, and some really terrible songs about poop under fingernails. I guess it's no wonder that Pink Slip was never monetized. I've just got the wrong sort of creative mind.

There's more to Cambridge academia than Harvard and MIT

Ask anyone who lives in a downtown area of a big city: rats are one big existence bane.

Once in a while, at dawn or dusk, I spot them scurrying across a sidewalk, heading for cover in the bushes. Or slithering down a sewer. Once in a while, when I'm out walking, I come across a dead rat flattened on the pavement - and I utter a little atheist's prayer of thanks that there's one less of these nasty bastards out there marauding around.

Sometimes, when I'm in bed, I hear them rustling around in the trash. Not my trash, mind you. I'm the goody-two-slippers who gets up at the crack of dawn to take my garbage and recycle out. Alas, despite my regular texts, notes, and signs, not everyone in my building follows in my slippers. They bring their trash out the night before, leaving hours for rats to root through the their black plastic garbage bags. Not the special peppermint-infused, supposedly rat-proof white bags I buy on Amazon and leave out in the laundry room for everyone to use if they must take their trash out the night before. 

In the early hours of the a.m., when I'm bringing my trash out, I find the others' bags chewed open, the sidewalk strewn with eggshells, avocado peels and pits, apple cores. Sometimes, I pick it up; mostly I leave it for Blessed Brian of Unit One who takes care of it. 

I live in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Boston, and there are rat traps - oblong-shaped black boxes set out and serviced by the city - all over the place: front gardens, back walks, up against walls, up against trees. 

When you're up against rats, you have to be vigilant. 

I've never seen a rat in this building -just on occasional mouse - but if I were to see one on the inside, the For Sale sign would be up on the outside within hours.

I. HATE. THEM.

So I was pleased to read about a recent two-day consortium, the Cambridge Rat Academy, "a gathering of the sharpest minds in rat-extermination, to plan the counteroffensive" against these noxious beasts. Attendees came "to learn how to hone their rat-fighting skills and brush up on the latest techniques for spotting and exterminating rodents."

“Rodents tend to be overlooked in general by everybody on every level,” said Robert Corrigan, a well-regarded consultant and the academy’s featured speaker. “That’s a problem, because the rodents are taking advantage of us. We’re just like, ‘Oh, put out some poison. Or just put out some traps. Or go get a guy.’ You need to say, ‘No, if we’re going to control rodents in our cities, we need depth.’”

Corrigan has led dozens of Rodent Academies and travels the country giving seminars on the latest techniques for rat mitigation, particularly as the industry moves away from using toxic chemicals as the go-to solution to the problem.

“It’s much more than pulling out a box of poison,” Corrigan said.

Rat prevention these days, he said, is about “integrated pest management,” or IPM, which encompasses all the nonpoison-related means available to keep rodents at bay. Think: landscaping that dissuades rats from building burrows, and sealing off foundations and exterior walls. (Source: Boston Globe)

My first thought was that Corrigan was "just" an exterminator who somewhere along the line figured out that there was more money in being and expert than being the guy who sets the traps. 

Well, turns out that Corrigan does have a pest control consulting business, which sure sounds like exterminator to me. But he's also a rodentologist with a PhD in entomology from Purdue. (A quick google, and I learn that entomology may sound buggy, but that "integrated pest management" falls under its mantle.)

Cambridge is one city that's been having some success wtih IPM. Reported rat sightings are down; rat killings are up. (Cambridge uses "smart boxes" that electrocute rats; I don't believe Boston's rat traps are all that smart.)

There's another approach to IPM, and that's a canine-based method from Unique Pest Management. UPM is based in DC, but they spend about a week each month in the Boston area with their trained ratters. UPM's Scott Mullaney brought one of his ratters, a Patterdale terrier to the Academy with a "kill count under her collar in the 'thousands.'" 

Once, he said, a team of three dogs killed 88 rats in three hours. 

I'm always thinking about getting a dog, but would never consider a ratter, cute and effective as they might be. What would I do if my cute, effective little ratter actually caught one.

Shudder, shudder, shudder to the nth. 

Meanwhile, I'm just happy to learn that there's more to Cambridge academia than Harvard and MIT.  

And more than happy to learn that the City of Boston has hired Bobby Corrigan to analyze our situation and make some recommendations. 

Cambridge Rat Academy. Boola boola! Sis-boom-ba!

Fun with words!

I recently saw a Washington Post column by Benjamin Dreyer which talked about words for obsolete actions or items that are still used, even though the actions and items are long gone. 

I suppose if you have a landline with a cradle and receiver, you could still hang up a phone, but are there still any rotary phones out there that you dial? Today, we hang up the phone by pressing a button - that's not really a button - or just waiting for the call to somehow disengage. We dial our smartphones via the keypad, but most of our calls (for those of us old school enough to actually talk on the phone) are placed by finding the contact and hitting the phone icon.

Dreyer also noted that, when we email, we routinely "cc" someone. One of those c's makes sense. The one that stands for copy. But the c that stands for carbon? Us old geezers will remember inserting a sheet of carbon paper between an original page and the copy, and rolling it into the typewriter.

He also pointed out that "we listen to podcasts, though who even owns an iPod anymore?" And that Microsoft Word uses the icon of a floppy disk for its Save function. (Some of us remember a time before there was any storage on a PC, and that, if you wanted to save a file, you saved it to a floppy disk.)

The Dreyer article got me scrounging around looking for other examples, and Merriam-Webster came through. They include carbon copy, dial, and hang up on their list, and note that there was something quite satisfying about hanging up a phone by slammig it down on the receiver. Alas, the only smartphone equivalent is hurling the phone against the wall.

We still use the term soap opera, which came from the time when soap manufacturers sponsored most of the overwrought, over-dramatic series broadcast on radio. Soap operas made the leap to TV, and they live there still. I don't watch any, but I understand that, while sponsors may include a laundry or dishwashing y, but are just as likely to run ads for a range of products and services. (Family aside on soap operas. My mother didn't listen to or watch soaps, but my grandmother was a fan. Until I was seven, we lived upstairts from Nanny's first floor flat in her triple decker. After lunch, my older sister Kath would go downstairs to hang with Nanny and listen to The Romance of Helen Trent. This would have been in the very early 1950's, before we all had TVs, but when everyone had radios. Anyway, after Kath came up a few times very distraught about something that had happened to Helen. My mother had no idea what Kath was upset about, but she sleuthed out that she was getting caught up in Nanny's soap opera. And that ended that.)

I have never given a thought to the origin of the word stereotype. It's "a kind of printing plate once commonly used in newspaper publishing," used to create a plate that printed an entire page at once. A good thing. Somehow, the word moved into the more pejorative usage we're familiar with. 

M-W talks about dime stores. Talk about obsolete. While low-priced stores are (thanks to inflation) now dollar stores, dime store is sometimes used to indicate that something's of dubious quality.  

M-W missed the boat on how dime is now used as a verb. As in "drop a dime" on someone, i.e., turning them in. Which goes back to days of yore when a) there were pay phones; and b) you dropped a dime into the slot to use one. 

I was surprised that neither Dreyer nor M-W came up with album, while we still use the word album to refer to a collection of songs put together on a record (which, even though vinyl records are making something of a comeback, mostly isn't a record). 

When I first starting buying records, an album was a LP (long playing) vinyl record containing a dozen or so songs, and slipcased into a flat cardboard "envelope." But for my parents' generation, an album was an actual album - a cardboard (sometimes leatherette-covered) "book" that contained multiple paper sleeves, each of which held a collection of 78 records made of brittle Bakelite.

Even if you didn't have a full album of records by the same artist, you had to keep these 78's in an album to protect them. But some albums were thematically or artistically of a piece. 

When my war-bride mother moved from Chicago to Worcester in 1946 - my Chicago mother met my Worcester father when he was stationed at Navy Pier in downtown Chicago towards the end of WWII - among the things packed in her trunk was an album of Nelson Eddy songs. We had a 1940's record player that played 45's and 78's, and a separate, more modern, stereo that could play 33's and 45's, but we loved to play those old 78's, often to make fun of Nelson Eddy, who we considered an unappealing fop. We couldn't believe that my mother had ever swooned over Nelson Eddy. But we lustily sang along with "Boots," "Shortnin' Bread," and "When I'm Calling You." (I haven't used them in years, but I believe that my skill at imitating Nelson Eddy is still intact. I think it's like riding a bicycle...)

Fun with words!

When is a chaqueta not a chaqueta? Ay, chihuahua!

I once worked for a tech company that rolled out a major (i.e., really pricey) collection of services named Black Rocket. The name had nothing to do with anything. We had a new CMO, and he showed up with this name in his pocket and made sure that he got to use it. There was a fake "contest" to name the new offering but - surprise, surprise - his name won.

Once the company had invested a ton in all sorts of Black Rocket merch - not just the usual corporate swag like caps, shirts, mugs and lunchboxes, but goodies like lava lamps, bicycles, and (if memory holds - chairs) - and invested a ton of money in print and TV advertising, someone figured out that Black Rocket was the name for a powerful form of hashish in the Netherlands, and a condom in Spain.

Given this fond memory, I was amused to read about the nickname choice for the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, a minor leage affiliate of the LA Dodgers. The nickname: Chaquetas. Which means jackets in English, but in some parts of the Hispanic community, has another meaning. Chaqueta is slang for masturbation.

Go, Jackets! Go, Jack-offs?

Many minor league clubs have a nickname associated with the Hispanic community. Baseball is very big in the Latin American world, and many of current and recent major league superstars hail from places like the DR. (For the Red Sox: David Ortiz, Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, Rafael Devers...)

The nicknames are part of the Copa de la Diversión (Fun Cup), a minor league outreach program aimed at Latin American fans. My minor league team, the Red Sox Triple AAA Worcester WooSox uses the nickname Wepa, which is a general purpose word used by Puerto Ricans when they're excited or joyful. The Wepa icon is a rocket.

Anyway, the choice of the name Chaquetas was a shout-out to the Mexican population, which is huge in California, and to mariachi music, which is muy popular.

Unfortunate association with masturbation aside, it's actually an excellent choice, given the ornate jackets that mariachi musicians wear. And there was sound reasoning behind the pick when the Quakes decided to change their prior Copa name - Los Temblores, which literally translates to Quakes - with something a bit more fun. (Little did they know...)

The idea of a mariachi theme came up, inspired part by the popularity of mariachi performances at Dodgers games and part by fond memories of Dodgers relief pitcher and Rancho Cucamonga resident Joe Kelly* wearing a mariachi jacket to the White House following L.A.’s 2020 World Series win. (Source: LA Times)

There was, of course, a bit of backlash (largely on social media). Despite this, the Quakes - after talking to members of the fanbase they were trying to appeal to, which apparently doesn't include those who associate 'chaqueta' with 'jerking off' - decided to stick with the name Chaquetas. There doesn't seem to be a ton of Chaquetas merch available. The caps are sold out, likely due to young cut-ups who do associate 'chaqueta' with 'jerking off.'

Ay, chihuahua!

-----------------------------------------------------------

*Joe Kelly was part of the 2018 Red Sox team which won the World Series. He was wildly popular here in Boston.

Talk about waterfront property. (A real bargain!)

Nantucket is beautiful. Plenty beautiful. And quaint. Plenty quaint. And swanky. Plenty swanky.

Rich folks. Famous folks. Rich and famous folk wannabes. They all want to have a home there. 

Or so I hear. I've only been there once, and that was when I was in high school. I do remember the beauty, the quaint, the swank. And while way back then, I didn't have all that much consciousness of rich and/or famous, I was still vaguely aware that rich and/or famous folks hung out there. 

But most of what I know about Nantucket is what I hear on the news, read in the newspapers.

And part of what I know from all that hearing and reading is that a lot of Nantucket's waterfront property is under siege from the elements.

Every once in a while, usually (but not always) after a storm, there's a story about a house that just a very short while ago was on the waterfront with plenty of nice beachfront frontage is now teetering on the edge of a sandcliff, ready to fall into the drink. Sometimes the house is shown jacked up and ready to be moved a couple of hundred feet back. Good luck with that, of course. A couple of hundred feet worth of front yard can be eroded away in a couple of weeks. (Remember the kiddo Bible ditty about the foolish man building his house upon the sand? I do believe that Nantucket is all sand. So much for the wisdom or the rich and/or famous.)

Despite a number of "house overboard" occurrences, rich folks, famous folks, rich and famous folk wannabes, and - I guess - just plain folks with some money who just love Nantucket, still spend plenty of $$$  to live there. Especially on the waterfront, where most properties will run you a few million. (Median price of a home on Nantucket is $3.2M.)

But this past winter, a waterfront house - 3 bed, 2 bath, mahogany deck, "incredible views of the Atlantic Ocean and the serene sound of rolling waves"  - hit the market for the low, low price of $600K. Especially amazing given that, just last September, this place was listed for $2.3M. Hmmm. There must be a catch beyond the ominous catch-all words in the listing: Property is being sold "AS IS." Hmmm, hmmm, hmmmmmmm.

The catch was that last fall the home "lost a stunning 70 feet to erosion in just a matter of weeks, putting the home at imminent risk."

Never fear: someone was willing to buy a charmer, whatever the risk.

A longtime visitor to Nantucket, Brendan Maddigan, who lives in New York, toyed with owning a summer home there for his young family for years. He regularly scanned the market and bookmarked links to a half-dozen properties, including the house on Sheep Pond Road. When he got an alert the price had nosedived, he submitted an all-cash offer, and in February the home was his.

From growing up in Woods Hole and now working for a real estate investment firm in New York City, Maddigan, 42, said he is clear-eyed about the risks, especially as sea levels rise and storms become more intense.

“The home is amazing. The location is amazing. And the price mitigates the risk to a good degree,” he said. “I’d like to think that it’ll be there for a while, but I was definitely aware of the risk of any particular storm causing a problem in the future.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Now Brendan Maddigan is no dummy. I may have way too much faith in an MIT education, but Maddigan is an MIT grad, with a mechanical engineering degree with additional focus in management, entrepreneurship, and history. So he no doubt gets the mechanics of a solidly built house. He's had a very successful career in the world of commercial real estate. And that fact that he's had a long-standing interest in entrepreneurship suggests he's a risk taker. But I've got to question that minor concentration in history, given that the recent history of this house having lost nearly all of its frontage in a matter of weeks. Even if the bargain price "mitigates the risk to a good degree."

Hmmmm, etc.

Maybe Brendan Maddigan can afford to spend $600K on a house that might not be there by summertime. Maybe it's such a pittance, that he'll be happy to get one or two summers out of it, and if that doesn't happen, well, shrug.

I don't think I'd sleep all that deeply there, give the "incredible views of the Atlantic Ocean and the serene sound of rolling waves." Those "incredible views" now appear to be just 10 feet away from the front porch, when last summer they were 80 feet away. And I don't know how "serene" the "sound of rolling waves" will be if they're lapping the foundation of your house. 

This isn't the only property on Nantucket that's being "permanently devalued." As erosion continues to occur, as the island's coastline recedes, more and more houses will plummet in price like this one. (It's estimated that hundreds of houses are presently at risk, and over 2,000 at risk by 2070.) Cautious sellers will no doubt sell out. Wait-and-see owners will wait and see. And risk takers like Maddigan will roll the dice that it'll take a while before their waterfront property turns into a houseboat.  

Recent history suggests that catastrophe isn't that far off. A home in Maddigan's new neighborhood "was demolished in October after losing approximately 35 feet of dune in a matter of months." 

Maddigan is planning on building a berm, but that might not do much good. Last fall, some waterfront property homeowners on Boston's North Shore - in a town far less beautiful, quaint, swanky, rich and/or famous than Nantucket - spent $600K on a berm, most of which washed away during a single storm this winter.

But, shrug, Maddigan's hoping that he gets lucky and that his kids end up with some fond memories of their summer home. 

Good lucky to him!

Hey, McCormick, if it ain't broke, why "fix" it.

Way back in March, on the day before St. Patrick's Day, I set out to do my annual soda-bread baking thang. I had everything I needed: flour, sugar, eggs, butter, baking soda, baking powder, salt, buttermilk, jumbo seeded raisins I had to procure online, and, of course, caraway seeds. Plenty of caraway seeds. Some Morgan & Bassett, some my old standby: McCormick, with a new-fangled, spruced up black and red cap instead of the just plain red cap I was used to.

I was mixing up my final batch, and still had a few bottles of caraway seeds on hand. And all I needed to complete my final batch was one of the small jars. A jar of McCormick's.

So I took one off of my spice shelf and tried to open it. The cap didn't budge. I tried the other McCormick's shorty that I had. Couldn't move that cap, either. 

I googled and found that the top item on McCormick's FAQ was this:

Why can’t I remove the lid on my bottle?

Sometimes too much adhesive is used when the safety seal is applied, causing the lid to adhere to the bottle. This can sometimes happen when too much heat is applied at the time the cap is applied. This was an isolated issue and adjustments have been made to resolve it.

In the meantime, to remove, carefully wrap a hot, wet paper towel around the lid for 5-10 minutes. The heat from the paper towel should loosen the adhesive and allow you to twist off the cap.

Well, that was some safety seal. I tried the hot, wet paper wrap twice on each bottle. And even tried submerging the caps in a cup of boiling water. I tried to dislodge the adhesive with a handy-dandy lobster pick.  

In the process, I managed to twist my left wrist.

Fortunately, I had a non-McCormick bottle at the ready and was able to make my final batch without having to run out for additional caraway.

I occasionally comment, seldom tweet. But I did feel compelled to take myself to Twitter X and send a little message to McCormick.

Hey @mccormickspices, If I mail you these can someone open them and get them back to me by next Paddy's Day so I can bake my soda bread? The hot water-paper towel trick from your FAQ didn't work.

I got a couple of likes, a comment or two, a retweet. But nothing from McCormick. They don't have much of a Twitter presence, but I thought there'd be some response.  

I didn't have my receipt, but the next time I was at my grocery store, I was able to return the bad bottles and get a refund. (And, by the way, I was talking to my friend Joyce, and she had had the same problem with a jar of McCormick something or other.)

Meanwhile, I'd also tried to leave a message on the McCormick support site. Alas, although there was a BIG box to enter your comment/question into, there was an unspecified teeny-tiny character limit.

So I wrote to their support email address:

Here's a pic of the jars I was unable to open. [See above.]

And here's the full message I wanted to leave. Alas, I ran into an unspecified character limit. 

I recently purchased two jars of your carraway seeds - a necessary ingredient for the Irish soda bread I make each St. Patrick's Day. Unfortunately, I was unable to open either container. I did follow the instructions given in your FAQ - wrapping the jars in a paper towel soaked with hot water (which I did twice), but to no avail. In the frustrating process, I also managed to injure my wrist in the process. Sigh! I was able to return the jars to Roche Bros. in downtown Boston for a refund, but the overall experience of not being able to open the jars was pretty frustrating. While your FAQ indicated that the problem has been rare, I was speaking with a friend in Dallas who had the same experience. Fortunately, her husband – a former college hockey player – was able to get the jar open after a Herculean 10-minute effort. All I can say is that it will be quite a while before I purchase any McCormick product that uses one of the “new and improved” black and red caps.

A eight days later, here came a long but not especially satisfying response, especially given that it included the handy-dandy tip I had found on the FAQ, which I had said I had followed. 

Dear Maureen:

Thank you for taking the time to contact us. We are sorry for your disappointing experience with our Caraway Seed and hope you will accept our apologies.

We are sorry the lid on your recent container of Caraway Seed was unable to be removed. This will sometimes happen to a bottle when too much heat is used at the time the cap is applied. The glue from the safety seal under the lid melts onto the threads of the bottle and 'glues' the lid fast. We appreciate you providing us with this feedback and apologize for your disappointment with our packaging. We are aware of this issue and adjustments have been made to fix this.

In the meantime, we have a helpful tip. To remove, carefully wrap a hot, wet paper towel around the spice bottle cap for 5-10 minutes. The heat from the paper towel should loosen the adhesive and allow you to twist off the cap. We appreciate you bringing this to our attention and have shared your feedback with our Quality Assurance teams for their review.

We would like to get some more information to help begin addressing your concerns:
• What is the product UPC?
• What is the full Best By date on the package (include all letters and numbers)?
• When was this product purchased?
• What is the name of the store where this item was purchased?
• Where is the store located (city and state)?
• When was this item initially opened?
• Was the inner (or outer) security seal intact before you opened it?

We appreciate that you have taken the time to bring your concern to our attention. We continually strive to provide the highest level of quality in all our products. If you have further questions regarding any of our products, we are happy to help. Please feel free to respond to this email or call us at 1-800-632-5847 between the hours of 9:00 am and 7:00 pm, Monday - Friday EST. Your patronage is important to us and we hope to continue bringing our passion for flavor to your meals.

Sincerely,

Melissa
Consumer Affairs Specialist
Ref # 3541457

Having returned the unopenable jars I did not, of course, have the UPC. But I sent back what info I did have. 

A week later, all I had gotten back was a request to rate my transaction with Melissa. I'm sure that, if she's an actual human and not a bot, Melissa is a perfectly nice person. But I was pretty darned meh in terms of providing a rating and feedback.

Even though I'm not interested in acquiring any of those new-fangled-ly capped bottles of McCormick anything, I was figuring that the'd send me some coupons or something for my trouble. To date, nada.

Anyway, in googling around, I did come across a story on CNN touting McCormick's new-fangled caps, which were "giving its iconic red-cap bottles their first makeover in nearly 40 years."

Shoppers will soon see newly designed bottles that feature updated labeling and a new “snap” cap that the company says keeps spices and seasonings fresher compared to its previous design. McCormick’s new sleeker bottles, which have already begun rolling out in the United States, will first contain its most popular herbs and spices, including cinnamon, garlic powder and crushed red pepper.

No mention of my beloved caraway seeds. But lots of yadda-yadda-yadda.

A new manufacturing process that will help "maintain freshness." The addition of a "best buy" date. A supposedly satisfying "snap" sound when you put the cap back on. Bottles made using 50% worth of post-consumer recyclable material. A design "validated" by a lot of consumer research.  An overall "multi-sensorial experience."

Well, most of my multi-sensorial experience was the twisted wrist. But maybe that's just me.  

Perhaps McCormick should have put a little more research into testing to see whether the manufacturing process worked? Or at least asked themself whether it was worth "fixing" something that ain't broken.