They struck again. I came out of work today to find the familiar orange-and-black VIOLATION notices folded and stuffed under windshield wiper after windshield wiper, all up and down the street. But wait a minute… upon closer inspection, these were not parking tickets at all, but blood-pressure-raising advertisements for Workout World, the gym beneath my office whose noisy aerobics class music’s bass drifts up and rattles my desk when I’m working late. Reading one of the many unfolded (discarded (thrown down in disgust (wipered away))) copies adorning the street and floor of the parking garage, it read “THIS IS NOT A VIOLATION…” at the top without the clever folding.
For just a moment I wondered what would happen if I gathered up every single one of them in a couple huge trash bags, held the gym’s doors open wide and leafblowered them all in, swirling around the equipment and covering the front desk like fallen orange and black autumn leaves. Of course my membership, if they caught me, would be revoked in a nanosecond, but I wondered, since I wouldn’t have actually entered the gym (trespassing), and the ad-trash was quite provably their own to begin with, whether I could be gotten into any sort of legal trouble for doing this. Littering, or loitering, or disturbing the peace, or tortious interference with prospective economic advantage, or any of the other eggshells we stand on every day without noticing them. Actually, I’m no lawyer, but I can pretty much guarantee that they could.
Then I kind of start to wonder why they can do it, but I can’t. Why plastering someone’s private property with unwanted litter was somehow above reproach, and what the difference is. Then I wonder how we’ve let society go this far. Then I tell myself I think too much, and start walking home.
QOTD:
“I have to show you this email I just got.” -MH
“…Enlargement…?” – TvS
“Yeah, I’ve been getting those too.” -me
“But I don’t subscribe to them.” -MH
QOTD (yesterday) :
“Was he being a dick in the good way or the bad way?” – me
“The bad way.” – No*
“Er wait…I don’t know if there’s a good way to be a dick.” -me
“Ha! That’s a quote!” – No*
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