Whomever is in charge of Tongariro Water's quality control over the process line that inserts the water-filled foil bladders into the branded cardboard dispensing casks needs their job re-advertised.
Forthwith.
And Tongariro Water's management needs to compensate me for the following costs I'm going to incur as a result of that individual not doing their job properly.
For the past few weeks, I've replaced my system of carting large plastic flagons of water that I've been filling for the past year at the local fluoride-free tap, to the simpler (and, I thought, safer, albeit a boatload more expensive) option of buying cask water. Unless it's out of stock, I'll always opt for Tongariro Spring Water. It tastes better than the generic brand alternative my local supermarket stocks alongside Tongariro.
However, opting for the better taste has come with a downside - a downside that, today, proved huge and untenable that it should ever happen again.
The foil bladders (at least of most of the casks of this brand that I have brought home) are just dumped into the containing cardboard cask. There is no thought given to where or what angle the dispensing tap ends up in relation to the perforated hole intended for its protrusion for dispensing the water.
The tap can be
inches away from the hole, and the tap can be pointed in
any direction. All of which makes trying to get your hand in the hole and locate the tap, then manoeuvre it back out of the hole, and then work out how to get the tap pointing straight downwards so that it dispenses into your glass and not sideways off onto the floor . . . very bloody challenging indeed.
The Too-Regular Fight with Poorly Positioned Packaging
Far too often, it's a real fight trying to do something that a functional quality control packaging process should render totally unnecessary for the end-consumer.
Today was the worst experience of them all. So - here I was with my hand (good luck to anyone with hands any larger than my small mitts) groping off around the side of the cask when I
finally located the tap. When I managed to pull the tap back through the hole, there was - as there too often is - way too much bladder on the one side and a way-too-taut situation on the other side of the tap.
And the tap was pointing off at something more akin to a horizontal trajectory. Which would be fine if you intended to use it as a bloody WATER FOUNTAIN. But as a downward, standard tap type of dispensing arrangement? Not so much.
(On several occasions I've tried to solve both the locating problem and the tap-angle debacle by attempting to pull open the top of the cask. I've also tried to do that for the purposes of flat disposal of the empty cask. But it's a serious operation, requiring either a knife or a whole lot more strength and patience than I possess. So that's never worked.)
So here I am today with a tap that doesn't want to point the right way to start with, compounded by the decidedly uneven amount of bladder on either side of it, due to the inconvenient angle on which it's been dumped into the cask.
The Tap Came Off in My Hand
In trying to get it to where it should be so that the water flow would fill my glass beneath the tap rather than fountain all over the floor, the actual tap (see photo) came off in my hand.
And the water
GUSHED out of the large hole. The one where
a tap used to be.
And it gushed at a large and substantial velocity.
Worse still, I had two casks sitting beside each other, with a chopping board on top and a set of drinking glasses on the board. So I had the choice (that I had to make at the speed of the gravity-propelled gush from the large hole near the bottom of the water bladder) of whether I would tip the cask backwards to try to stop the gush - but end up with a set of broken glasses all over the floor and perhaps a chopping board on top of my dog . . . or whether I would take however many seconds would be absorbed by moving the chopping board and the glasses, while the huge gush of water pissed out all over my floor.
I could only really opt for the latter . . . and piss out it did. But far worse, the floor of my 1926 bungalow is on a slight downward roll in that back corner of the house, and the rolling lake of water made straight for the dishwasher . . . flowing rapidly underneath it.
So I'm trying to reach for anything that would absorb a large volume of water with one hand, and pull the dishwasher out with the other hand, and rectify the cask with another hand that I didn't actually have.
A Costly Outcome for This Consumer
It was an unattractive situation and had a highly unattractive outcome.
And
a very costly outcome, viz a viz:
1) I have had to pull the dishwasher out so far from the wall to get a fan heater pointed usefully into the cavity, that the pipes going into the machine probably now need checking by someone qualified to do that - properly.
So whether that's the local whiteware store that sold me it and installed it, or a plumber, I'm up for that cost. Because I'm not risking undetected leaks and mold in a hidden location - like behind the back of a dishwasher.
2) The floor does not perfectly meet the back wall and that of the two cupboards on either side of the dishwasher, and conceivably, water can have made its way down there. Ironically, because I have been made extremely ill by mold exposure in the past, I am very much attuned both to the dangers of mold / undetected mold, and how easily a mold growth can start. It was, in fact, only this past Friday, that I had the region's recently mold-trained building inspector come and give my house an annual once-over.
Looking Forward to Hearing from You
TODAY, Tongariro Water Management
So I'm up for the cost of getting him back this week. All over again. To ensure that no water has made its way somewhere that my soak-up activities haven't reached, and that the fan heater I've had blasting away all afternoon and evening hasn't dealt with.
And there are further costs to me of this manufacturer's tardiness: The fact that I've used good items that I don't usually mop up water on the floor with, just because they were the closest items at hand in an urgent flooding situation. The fact that I've had to run a fan heater for hours and will still have to run it for hours more. And the fact that I actually had plans for my day that did NOT include dealing with the consequences of your sloppiness, Tongariro Water.
So feel free to contact me and tell me that I can redirect the invoices of the above suppliers to you, for your settlement thereof.
And if you want to verify any part of the above, please do so with the Duty Manager, James, at New World in Masterton.
I look forward to hearing from you - promptly. I'll be emailing you the link to this article, along with my phone number. I'll be expecting your call -
TODAY.
PS to Tongariro Water management:
And in case you're tempted to pull out the old "no-one's ever complained about this before" line
(in which case I'd direct you to the free download on this website i.e. 'The 5 Most Infuriating Things You Could Ever Say to A Pissed-Off Customer'), please be informed that - while the taste isn't quite as good - I've never had to fight with the Woolworths generic brand that my local supermarket stocks on the same shelf.
Nor has it ever flooded my kitchen floor.
