Bounty, Brawny CEOs Wearing Down Patience Of Mutual Friend

WEST PATTERSON, NJ—Though he has maintained a close friendship with both men for nearly a decade, Miles McCormick, 42, admitted Tuesday that the strain of managing tensions between the CEOs of Bounty and Brawny was becoming too much to bear. “Every time I’m with one, all he wants to do is badmouth the other,” said McCormick, who recently spent an entire lunch numbly listening to accusations that Brawny had stolen the design for its new Country Market print from an almost identical Bounty product. “He just went on and on about how the nation’s so-called leading paper-towel manufacturer couldn’t tell the difference between flex-quilting and a hole in the ground. I’m sick of it.” Exhausted by the endless backbiting, McCormick told his friends that until they worked out their differences, he’d be using rags.