Where, oh where has my Tylenol gone?
Most of us know what we like. I like chicken thighs and turkey breasts. Toilet paper, in my opinion, should come at me up and over – not under. Paul McCartney was always my favorite Beatle.
And I like Tylenol. Caplets. Extra strength, sitting in a bottle on my kitchen counter.
You kind of go through life expecting some things to always be there. The evening news. The sunrise. A bottle of fake aspirin. But for months now, I’ve been checking out the Tylenol supplies wherever I go. Costco. CVS. Walgreens. The little drug stores out on the island.
Please don’t write me with snide comments about how I need a life.
I have a life, and this is it.
And it does not include Tylenol.
For more than a year now, McNeil Consumer Healthcare – the Johnson & Johnson subsidiary that makes Tylenol – has been forced to remove enormous quantities of children and adult Tylenol from shelves because of a musty odor that’s apparently very, very strong. McNeil does its recalling by lot numbers, so it’s impossible to know how many millions of bottles have been revoked.
But the shortage – and the factory problems where this Tylenol was produced – are so serious that, finally, all the wholesale suppliers seem to be out and you simply cannot find Tylenol anywhere on store shelves.
No kidding.
McNeil spokesman Marc Boston – a nice man whose job I certainly would not want right now – was careful this week to avoid real answers to any real questions.
The company won’t say how many recalls there have been. Boston wouldn’t discuss the reasons for the recalls, although there’s been testimony before the Food and Drug Administration that the medicines may have been tainted by a pesticide and flame retardant applied to wooden shipping pallets. McNeil began pulling Tylenol in 2010 after customers reported the dank smell, and then nausea, vomiting and diarrhea after use.
Indeed, Boston suggested that if I wanted numbers about the recalls I should go online and click on all the different tabs and links, eventually coming up with my own personal tally of his company’s recalled products.
Um, no thanks. I just want a bottle of pills.
“Call the toll-free number on your Tylenol bottle and they’ll tell where you can find it,” Boston said.
“I don’t have a bottle of Tylenol,” I reminded him.
So Boston gave me the number, which you might want to write down because it’s tricky: 877-TYLENOL, which I called.
Exactly three minutes and 12 seconds later, customer service specialist Christina informed me there’s no regular Tylenol for sale anywhere near me, although I might check Amazon or drugstore.com.
Cool. Black market Tylenol.
It’s better than no drugs at all.
Frankly, I’ve been reading about the Tylenol recalls for months now, but in bits and pieces, so the enormity kind of snuck up on me. The mommy bloggers have been in a tizzy since last summer, since some of the earliest recalls were for children’s liquid.
And McNeil’s problems aren’t just affecting consumers. A top Johnson & Johnson executive was forced to resign over this. They had to close a plant in Fort Washington, Pa., laying off hundreds of local workers. There are lawsuits and FDA investigations and plummeting stocks. Brand experts – those New York execs who follow customer loyalty for Wall Street reasons – say it will be hard for McNeil to ever retrieve their customer base.
For some reason – probably because it’s manufactured elsewhere – you can still find the occasional bottle of Tylenol PM and Tylenol Arthritis. But I don’t want to go to sleep and my joints are fine – knock on wood – so no thanks.
Most, like me, now have a bottle of generic acetaminophen sitting on the kitchen counter, although name recognition is hard to break. I take a Sharpie and write “Tylenol” on my bottle of fake stuff so I don’t accidentally pop an Advil, which I’m allergic to.
Erin Craig, a pharmacist at the family-owned Gulfstream Pharmacy in Briny Breezes, says her customers are just starting to notice.
“Within the past few months, it’s really been dwindling down,” she said, about her Tylenol supplies. “We’ve been able to get it, really, throughout the year, but just recently we haven’t been able to.”
Craig said apparently wholesalers have had enough back stock to supply her family’s small store.
But those days are gone. Craig checked her supplier list of available product, and there’s no regular or extra-strength Tylenol to be found. Anywhere.
“I think over the next few months, when people start to come back, they’re really going to notice,” said Craig, whose business is extremely seasonal.
Already, I feel their pain.
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