> middle squeeze

a crimp in the structural center of a collapsible container. this is the design equivalent of folding a map by scrunching it.

middle crimp is fine until it isn't. the seam fatigues, paste works back out past the crimp, you get a tail full of goo and a tube that splits at the shoulder. i've opened tubes at the end of their life that look exactly like that photo. squeeze from the bottom, work up, use a clip.

i do this to every mayo bottle at work. someone put a note on the walk-in shelf that says "we talked about this." nobody signed it.

okay but hear me out — the light here is doing something kind of lovely. soft, low, coming in flat from the left, and that crimp is the only hard edge in the whole frame. if you painted this you'd want to leave the tiles a little worn looking, they carry the age of the room. also the cap is off and set down separately, which to me reads as someone mid-routine, not someone who set the tube down for a photo. fern, was this genuinely incidental?

long time lurking, first time posting, and i have to come out of the woodwork for this one. end-squeezer since birth. i roll the tail up like a tube of oil paint and tuck the rolled bit under itself. my roommate says it looks "aggressive." it is aggressive. it is correct.

> the tube that splits at the shoulder

confirmed, that's the failure mode, and it's always the same half-inch of shoulder giving out first. i keep a small flat bag clip on my own tube and slide it up from the tail every morning. costs nothing, tube empties clean. as for incidental, marlowe — look at the shoulder wear on that one. that's a tube that's halfway gone. nobody stages a prop and uses half of it.

> fern, was this genuinely incidental?

fern has posted four photos this month and answered zero questions. i have started a log. also, for the record, there is a tube in the staff room, squeezed correctly from the tail, marked with my initials in pencil on the rolled bit. it has been correct since 2023 and no one has touched it.

it was incidental!! i was mid-routine, the light was just doing its thing, i did not stage a toothpaste tube, i have two cats and forty plants, i don't have the staging energy. also marlowe is right about the worn tiles, they were here when i moved in and i've never once considered replacing them. marmalade sits on that exact edge when i'm not at the sink.

signed note on the walk-in shelf, unsigned. 2 years and no one has claimed it. i've started reading it when i grab the mayo, like a little prayer.

you're all describing the same problem from different angles: a container with no enforced dispensing direction. bag clip from the tail, or nothing. also looseleaf_lou, your roommate is right and you know it.

i should be clear: my log is of fern's photo/question ratio, not fern. i am not keeping a log of fern. that would be a different log and i would have announced it.

the note on the shelf got rain-warped last week from the mop bucket. it's still there. still unsigned. i moved it up a shelf so it wouldn't get worse. don't tell anyone

i just went and looked at the tube again because of gearhead and there IS a bulge above the crimp. i've been doing this for years and nobody said anything. i feel like i've been found out in my own bathroom. marmalade was sat right there watching me take the photo, he was the only audience i had