Hello, I am the toilet paper lady. I am the shopper who rushes up, wide-eyed, to the managers at the grocery store to ask why my brand of choice, Scott Tube-Free, has gone missing from the shelves. I point to the line in the big merchandise ordering book to make sure they see the right item. I follow up in a week to see if they’ve reordered my precious product.

I’m not normally this picky, but Scott Tube-Free is extra special. It is the only toilet paper on the market without a cardboard tube in the middle of the roll. Living, as I do, on the sixth floor of a building with no elevator, I am especially attuned to frivolous waste. Every little thing that goes up my perilous staircase has to come down again. And then there is the environmental concern. Cardboard is made from trees, and cutting down trees contributes to global warming, so getting rid of toilet paper tubes has to be good.

Therefore Scott Tube-Free is the most important toilet paper, and its availability must be vigilantly assured. Right?

Once, when my local Key Food was out of stock, I cornered a manager and learned it was because Scott was rebranding the product. (It used to be called Scott Naturals.) Another time, the folks at Key Food just stopped ordering it, thinking maybe nobody wanted it. I set them straight.