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Sunday, May 4, 2014

Mailman turns jury duty into paid vactions (from cracked.com)

The Job Description

If we told you Joseph Winstead was the laziest mailman in the world, you'd probably assume he dumped the mail in trash cans instead of delivering it, or maybe took it home and burned it in a fire pit (like this guy used to do). You'd be wrong. Winstead went much further than that. He figured out a way to stay home all day, not even touching the mail he was supposed to deliver: fake jury duty.

Wait, what?

In October 2003, Winstead was chosen for jury duty. He actually served on the jury for a couple of months -- getting a paid leave of absence from his job to do so -- but quickly found out that there were many days when the jury did not meet. It was on these days that Winstead realized another thing: His bosses didn't seem to notice the difference between the days when he was actually serving on the jury and the days when he was just sitting at home, getting paid to eat Doritos.

Getty
We, the jury, find this chip delicious!

And so, for the bulk of an entire year -- 144 workdays in total -- Winstead enjoyed a paid vacation from his job as a mailman, probably keeping his co-workers convinced that he was trapped in a yearlong version of the plot of 12 Angry Men.

We assume he's the one on the far left with the grease-stained shirt.

Winstead's scam went on without a hitch that first year, but then, since he'd done such a bang-up job the first time around, he was called for jury duty again. A huge fan of pushing his luck to unreasonable limits (and not so big on the whole "honest work" thing), Winstead decided to give his scam a second go. But this time, his supervisors realized something funny was going on and launched an investigation that ultimately led to Winstead being sentenced to prison. He was also ordered to pay the Postal Service $38,923.95 in compensation, a fair numerical measurement of how much his story pissed the jury off.

iStockphoto

Sunday, April 20, 2014

13 Old-Timey Photos That Prove History Was Haunted (from Cracked.com)

13 Old-Timey Photos That Prove History Was Haunted

We've already pointed out that old photographs can be terrifying, thanks to that grainy black-and-white look and the fact that old-timey people were insane. But we've merely scratched the surface of the Lovecraftian world of horrors that our grandfathers called the present.

Here are 13 more photos to make you glad that you're living in the 21st century.

#13. "It's Almost Like Mother Is Still Alive ..."

retronaut.co

This might just look like a standard arrangement of weird-looking old-timey children, until you notice that there is a hooded thing right there among them. What the hell? Was one of them grossly deformed and had to be covered so the townspeople wouldn't come after her with torches? Because when you look at old family photos, you see it again and again -- often with the hooded figure lurking behind the kids like a sex offender Grim Reaper: