In 1982 someone poisoned Tylenol capsules on shop shelves. The company was not to blame — and it pulled every bottle in America anyway.
Easier version: read this lesson at A2/B1 level →
Ten items. Work through the four activities — say your answer out loud before you reveal it.
Three terms: liability · credo · market share. Say the right one, then reveal.
Read each part. After it, there's a quick check (answer from memory first), then one question to discuss.
At the end of September 1982, over roughly three days, seven people in the Chicago area died suddenly. The link between them was found quickly: each had taken Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules shortly before collapsing. Tests showed that the capsules had been filled with cyanide.
Tylenol was made by McNeil, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, and it was one of the most valuable products the group owned — the leading painkiller in the United States, with more than a third of the market. Investigators soon established that the poison had not entered the bottles in a factory. Someone had taken packets from shop shelves, opened the capsules, added cyanide, and put the bottles back to be bought. The capsules of that era could be pulled apart and closed again by hand, and the bottles had no seals that showed they had been opened.
So in the strict sense, the company was not at fault. It was the victim of a crime nobody had thought to plan for. But it was the company's name on the bottle, and for several days nobody could say how many bottles had been poisoned, or where. The first calls to the company came not from the police but from journalists. The question for the chairman, James Burke, and his team was not whose fault this was. It was what to do before anyone knew the answer.
1. Why was the company not legally or technically responsible for the poisoning?
2. What made the situation so difficult in the first few days, even though the cause was clear?
1. The poison was added after the product left the factory: someone took bottles from shops, contaminated the capsules and returned them to the shelves. Manufacturing was not the cause.
2. Nobody knew how many bottles had been contaminated or where they were, the company's name was on every packet, and the company learned of the crisis through the press rather than from its own systems.
The company stopped all Tylenol advertising at once, set up telephone lines for worried customers and doctors, and spoke to the press openly and often. Then it went much further than anyone required. It withdrew Tylenol capsules from every shop in the country — around thirty-one million bottles, at a cost reported at roughly a hundred million dollars. It offered to exchange capsules already in people's homes for solid tablets, free.
This was not the obvious choice. The poisonings had happened in one city. Federal officials reportedly worried that a national withdrawal would tell future criminals that this kind of attack worked. Inside and outside the company, there were people who argued that a national recall would destroy a product that could otherwise be saved. Tylenol's share of the market fell from over a third to well under a tenth within weeks, and at least one well-known advertising figure predicted publicly that the name would never sell again.
The company came back in November 1982 — around six weeks after the deaths — with a relaunch built around new packaging: a glued box, a plastic seal around the neck of the bottle, and a foil seal under the cap. It sent a large sales force to talk to doctors and pharmacists, and it distributed discount coupons across the country. Within about a year, Tylenol had won back most of its lost market share. The murders themselves were never solved. One man was convicted of trying to extort money from the company over the case, but no one was ever charged with the killings. Tampering with consumer products became a federal crime, and tamper-evident packaging became normal across the industry.
1. Why did some people, including officials, doubt that a national recall was the right decision?
2. What three things did the relaunch combine, and how quickly did the brand recover?
1. The deaths were in one area, so a national recall could look excessive; it might teach future criminals that product tampering was an effective attack; and it risked destroying the product rather than saving it.
2. Tamper-evident triple-sealed packaging, a large campaign aimed at doctors and pharmacists, and discount coupons for the public. Within about a year the brand had regained most of the market share it lost.
The case became a legend almost immediately. Business schools taught it as the model of crisis management: act fast, put the public first, tell the truth, accept the cost. Burke himself pointed to the company's credo — a one-page statement written in the 1940s that listed its responsibilities to doctors, nurses, patients and parents first, to employees and communities next, and to shareholders last. The document, he said, had made the decision easier, because it told people what the company had already promised.
The later record is more complicated. In 1986 another person died from a tampered Tylenol capsule, and the company stopped selling capsules for its non-prescription products altogether. Around 2009 and 2010, quality problems at McNeil factories led to repeated recalls of children's medicines and to criticism from regulators and Congress — including over a case in which contractors had been sent to buy up a faulty product from shops quietly instead of announcing a recall. The company that had written the textbook was accused of forgetting it.
In 2023 Johnson & Johnson separated its consumer-health brands, Tylenol among them, into a new company called Kenvue. In 2025 the brand was pulled into a new kind of trust crisis when the US government publicly linked the use of the drug in pregnancy to autism; the company and major medical organisations said the evidence did not show that the drug causes autism. Later that year, Kimberly-Clark agreed to buy Kenvue. So the question the case leaves open is sharper than the legend: was 1982 a triumph of values — or a rare crisis in which the company was clearly the victim, doing right was affordable, and nobody had to choose?
1. What role did the company's written credo play in the way the 1982 decision was later explained?
2. Name two later events that make the legend more complicated.
1. It had put patients, doctors and parents first and shareholders last, so the chairman argued the decision was already implied by what the company had promised; it gave people permission to act quickly and expensively.
2. Any two of: a further tampering death in 1986 and the end of non-prescription capsules; manufacturing quality failures and children's medicine recalls around 2009–2010, including a quiet buy-back of faulty product instead of an open recall; the 2025 public dispute about use in pregnancy and the brand's later sale.
A crisis is told in hours, not years. Board updates, press statements and incident reviews are built on precise time language: what happened first, what you are waiting for, and what will happen the moment a condition is met. At C1 the difference between when, once, until and by the time is not style — it is a commitment.
Put the verb in brackets into the correct form. Think about whether the meaning is future, past, or finished before another event.
1. We will not restart deliveries until the laboratory that the batch is clean. (confirm)
2. By the time the regulator published its report, the company its supplier. (already / change)
3. The moment the helpline tomorrow morning, calls will go straight to trained pharmacists. (open)
4. Once every shop its stock, we will announce the relaunch date. (return — completion matters)
1. confirms 2. had already changed 3. opens 4. has returned
Sentences 1, 3 and 4 all refer to the future — and none of them uses will after the time word.
Complete the second sentence so that it means the same as the first. Write only the missing words.
1. We only understood the size of the problem after the third report. → Only after the third report the size of the problem.
2. The share price didn't recover until the new packaging reached the shops. → Not until the new packaging reached the shops recover.
3. The press conference had barely started when the first question about liability came. → Hardly when the first question about liability came.
4. We had just announced the withdrawal and then a second case was reported. → No sooner had we announced the withdrawal a second case was reported.
1. did we understand 2. did the share price 3. had the press conference started 4. than
Notice the auxiliary: past simple → did; past perfect → had. And no sooner pairs with than, hardly with when.
Complete this model statement from a company in a product-safety crisis. The meaning you need is in brackets. Then read it aloud at the pace you would use in front of cameras.
“Our first responsibility is to the people who use our products. (at the exact second that) we learned of the reports, we stopped all advertising and withdrew the product nationwide. We will not return it to shelves (up to the point when) we can guarantee that every package is secure. (before that point in the future) the new packaging reaches pharmacies, every customer will have been offered a free exchange. Only when the investigation is complete (auxiliary + subject) comment on its findings. And (from the point when — one word) the first new shipments arrive, we will publish the test results in full.”
The moment (or As soon as) · until · By the time · will we · once
Look at what each time phrase promises. Until is a condition the public will hold you to; by the time is a deadline. Choose them the way a lawyer would.
Take these into the Speak tab: the hostile question there is really a question about sequence — what you knew, when, and what you did next.
A note on the figures: the numbers of bottles, costs and market-share percentages here are rounded and come from public reporting at the time; the later history of the brand is still developing.
All of it out loud, against the clock. In a crisis a leader speaks to the board, the public, the partners and the workforce on the same day — and all four versions will be compared.
Present this case to a board that is reviewing its own crisis plan. Structure it: the three days in Chicago → why the company was not at fault → the choice between a local and a national recall → the cost and the fall in market share → the relaunch → the recovery → the complications that came later.
Finish with one sentence on what your board should take from it. Use at least five key terms (recall, copycat, tamper-evident, liability, credo, market share, brand equity, charge, stakeholder, relaunch).
You are the chairman, four days into the crisis. A journalist says: “The poisonings were in one city. You're pulling a hundred million dollars of product from the whole country. Aren't you just teaching the next criminal that this works — and buying yourself good headlines while you do it?”
Answer properly: take the concern seriously, explain the sequence of what you knew and when, state what will happen before the product returns, and end with a commitment rather than a hedge. Then do it again in ninety seconds — the compression is the exercise.
Take one product or service problem — real or invented — and deliver the first announcement four ways, one minute each. Notice how the time language changes: what you promise, and by when.
Prefer not to use your own organisation? Take one of these instead: