A letter to the management of the yogurt lid

To the management responsible for the yogurt lid,

I am writing to formally report a nonconformity observed on the 19th of this month, at 7:42 a.m., in my kitchen.

Description of the incident

While attempting to open a cup of plain yogurt, I located the opening tab. By "tab", please understand a protrusion of roughly two millimeters, designed, as far as I can tell, to be gripped by an ant.

I pulled with my thumb and index finger. The lid tore. Not cleanly: it tore into three pieces, none of them removable, all firmly bonded to the rim. One of them, the largest, remained over the yogurt like a tarp over a roof under construction.

Mitigation attempts

1. I tried a knife. The knife pierced the lid and sprayed yogurt onto my shirt, which had been ironed.
2. I tried a spoon. The spoon pushed the lid into the yogurt.
3. I called Nico. Nico arrived, looked at the cup, said "that doesn't open, Arthur, it's decorative," opened it with his teeth and ate half.

Failure analysis

The problem is not the yogurt. The yogurt is within specification. The problem is that someone approved this packaging by testing it with 25-year-old hands, in a lab, with the cup sitting still on a table under perfect lighting. Nobody tested it at 7:42 a.m., half asleep, with the hands of a 64-year-old man and a coffee going cold nearby.

In quality control, we call this testing outside conditions of use. It's the equivalent of approving an umbrella on a sunny day.

Request

I respectfully request that the next version of the lid be tested by someone who has, at some point, opened a container without meaning to. I am available to take part in the test. I will bring a spare shirt.

Sincerely,

Arthur Bastos Quality inspector (retired, but not in spirit)

P.S. from Nico: the yogurt was good.