The Daily Pick

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Revenge on Annoyers; How to Annoy


Ian Urbina recently wrote a New York Times article about how Americans exact revenge on telemarketers, bad drivers, and loud cell phone users. Below is an excerpt, about how Mr. Wesley Williams began sending junk mail back to companies, and how he added extra weight to the packages, so the companies would have to pay more postage.

Anyways, the writer, Urbina, is looking for more of life's annoyances and small revenges. Scroll down to the bottom of Cockeyed.com's article to find out how to submit your story or suggestion.

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.

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Annoyances, Take Two

And if you're looking to annoy people, you can go to GetAnnoyed.com. I don't know if these work on monkeys, but some suggestions include:

General Ways to Annoy People
Announce when you're going to the bathroom.
ONLY TYPE IN UPPERCASE.
Before exiting the elevator, push all the buttons.
As people talk, smell their shoulders.
Ask people what gender they are.


posted by Anonymous at 8:13 AM

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