Drunk at Work, If You Will

There’s a satisfying article in the NYT today about life’s irritating irritations. E.g. the author, Ian Urbina, cites the instance of people who order “small, medium, or large” instead of the moronic “tall, grande, or venti” at Starbucks. As much as I attempt to avoid said retail coffee units, I will never, ever say Tall, Grande, or Venti, motherf****ers, if I do go in there. Anyway, “venti” means “twenty,” you freaks.

Here’s a great example from the story:

Wesley A. Williams spent more than a year exacting his revenge against junk mailers. When signing up for a no-junk-mail list failed to stem the flow, he resorted to writing at the top of each unwanted item: “Not at this address. Return to sender.” But the mail kept coming because the envelopes had "or current resident" on them, obligating mail carriers to deliver it, he said.

Next, he began stuffing the mail back into the “business reply” envelope and sending it back so that the mailer would have to pay the postage. “That wasn't exacting a heavy enough cost from them for bothering me,” said Mr. Williams, 35, a middle school science teacher who lives in Melrose, N.Y., near Albany.

After checking with a postal clerk about the legality of stepping up his efforts, he began cutting up magazines, heavy bond paper, and small strips of sheet metal and stuffing them into the business reply envelopes that came with the junk packages.

“You wouldn't believe how heavy I got some of these envelopes to weigh,” said Mr. Williams, who added that he saw an immediate drop in the amount of arriving junk mail. A spokesman for the United States Postal Service, Gerald McKiernan, said that Mr. Williams's actions sounded legal, as long as the envelope was properly sealed.

[Sheet metal. Ha. Haha.]

[Then there’s this interesting historical bit:]

Work slowdowns are methods commonly used by labor unions to apply pressure without actually striking. During the Solidarity movement in Poland, people expressed their disapproval of the government-run news media by taking a walk with their hats on backward at exactly 6 p.m. when the state news program started. When the government noticed the trend, it issued curfews, but people then put their televisions in their windows facing outward so that only the police walking the streets would see the broadcasts.

“You have to remember, in Poland during those years showing up drunk at work was seen as a patriotic act because people hated the bosses so much,” Professor Scott said.