bean juice

Do You Ever Feel Like a Can of Beans Filled with ‘Bean Juice’ and Just One Bean?

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We live in divided times, in a harsh, depleted reality where your luck can change dramatically at any moment. Sometimes you’re the bean juice, and sometimes you’re the single bean floating in it. That’s just the way it is.

This perfect metaphor for the way we live now comes to us courtesy of Steve Smith, a 41-year-old man living in Bristol, England, who recently opened a tin of Heinz baked beans only to find “there was only one bean and some bean juice.” According to The Independent, which reported the story, a Heinz can typically contains 465 beans. Where did the other 464 beans go? And how did one bean have the audacity, the rare conviction, to stay put? Someone get Malcolm Gladwell on this ASAP!

Smith told The Independent, “I thought it was funny — but annoying. It was the last tin we had in the cupboard. I had to have scrambled egg instead.” Tragic.

Armed with his ability to find the humor in everyday disappointment, Smith logged on to Twitter. There he reached out directly to the manufacturer, writing, “Hi @HeinzUK. I enjoy ‘bean juice’ as much as the next person, but when I opened a can this evening I was hoping for more than one bean.” Heinz has yet to respond, but it seems the company’s mentions are full of similar horrors. Like, what the hell??

Perhaps Smith should consider himself lucky, in the end, to have had even one bean for all his bean juice.

Do You Ever Feel Like a Can of Bean Juice and Just One Bean?