Angry with your coworkers? Bear a longstanding, simmering grudge against the office crowd? Just in a bad mood today and feel the need to vent imaginatively? Do what Thomas Shaheen, a postal employee in Akron, did. Piss in the break room coffee urn.
It’s comforting to know that we can regularly count on an employee of the U. S. Postal Service to discover creative new ways to stir things up at work.
Jeff Goldthorp's Slightly Bizarre But True Current Events Site
Water Cooler Blues – There’s lots of things that can be done with a water cooler. The only criteria is that the agent is clear, so no urine. It doesn’t even have to taste good – our friends in Akron are living proof of that. Why not throw a little unannounced party by spiking the H20 with grain? Alcohol, that is, not fiber. I’ll venture to say that your friends will never forget. Or maybe they’ll never remember. Either way it’ll be a hell of a blast. They might even thank you for it in a week or so..
The Permutations are Endless
Refrigerator Roulette – Every office has a refrigerator that the lunchpail crowd uses to stash their noontime meal. These are seldom locked and all but beckon to be tampered with. So why not go in and mix things up a little – just take Jack’s bologna sandwich out of his sack and swap it with Wendy’s tuna pita; switch Jane’s avocado wrap with Jim’s meatloaf; toss out all the chips altogether and eat the cookies yourself. You’ll feel a little like the Grinch, and you’re not going to want to come riding in their on a sleigh at the end of this, but it will be worth it if these people are annoying enough. What fun!
Apparently the coffee is pretty bad as a rule at the Akron Post Office. There’s no telling just how long Mr. Shaheen was supplementing the brew but we do know that eventually his suspicious colleagues went to the trouble of setting up video cameras to determine the source of that strange new flavor. Maybe it’s just me, but if I suspected there was something strange in the coffee I’d settle for simply asking around a bit. “Hey Bob, doesn’t the coffee taste like piss today?”
While they waited patiently for the results of their investigation to bear fruit, the Akron postal employees continued to enjoy the java as they speculated about it’s exotic new taste. An obscure African blend? A switch to dark roast? Sorry folks. Urine. Don’t worry, it’s sterile.
I’m imagining the looks on their faces as they peered at the video monitors and observed their spiteful coworker relieving himself in that urn. Some of them probably had their mugs handy and could remember vividly the last sip they took. Now it will be etched in their brain for the remainder of their natural lives. Drinking somebody else’s urine is something, I’ll wager, the average letter carrier from Ohio will not soon forget.
I can remember a stunt like this getting pulled on some guy at a place where I had a summer job in college. This guy was kind of a goof and he smoked a pipe – the two things are randomly occurring. He had this big old tin of Captain Black that he’d dip into regularly and stink the office up so another guy got the idea to start dumping used coffee grounds in that Captain Black tin. Do you know that the goof NEVER noticed? He just went on puffing his pipe until it had to be 80% Dunkin’ Donuts and 20% Captain Black. Maybe he would have noticed if we’d pissed in it.
But apparently there are consequences to be paid for extending other peoples’ food with human waste. Akron’s finest didn’t take too kindly to Mr. Shaheen’s stunt (after they got finished laughing) and charged him Aug. 5 with two misdemeanor counts of “adulteration of food or placing harmful objects in food”. His court date was a few weeks ago. I’m told he’s on a liquid diet at the county jail.
Well, let’s see if we can think of some other things that can be used for a little liveliness and tomfoolery at work.
What, Me Worry?
Gas is pushing on $3.00. Monstrous vehicles are bearing down on me with perilous, evil menace. And now for the good news. Our CAFE standards were announced today by none other than the distinguished Transportation Secretary. Besides being hopelessly confusing, they're also a travesty. Now a Suburu can be an SUV by adding half an inch. While a half an inch might be meaningful to me personally, it's not customary to shift a car into an entirely new class altogether with such a meager portion.
Now, here comes the good part. Guess what the TransSec pulls up in to announce his coup? You got it. A brand new Lincoln Navigator SUV.
It Looks OK
Not Grain, But Close Enough
Microwave Mania – Sitting right next to that refrigerator in the break room will dependably lay a fifteen year old microwave with leaky gaskets and hazardous emissions. Still, folks will use it to heat their popcorn and frozen lunches. Even more appalling, they’ll tend to do so without taking even the most rudimentary safeguards, like standing back a few paces or even fleeing the room altogether until the beeper goes off. They appear to have no appreciation for the mutating effects of toxic doses of microwave radiation. Why not raise their blood pressure a tad by rigging up the cancer-box to start smoking furiously after about a minute of operation – and not from the food, either. Messed up properly the microwave will appear to have malfunctioned in a way that even the most stout-hearted will shrink in fear from. This one will take a little ingenuity, but I’m convinced it can be done.
