KEY POINTS:
'When my nephew closed his account with GE, he also overpaid it. Dutifully the company refunded him the overpayment with a handwritten cheque signed by two different people (above). My nephew is seriously considering telling them he has lost the cheque to see if they will issue another one to replace it.'
* * *
A judge has denied unemployment benefits to a woman who was fired from her job for keeping a journal detailing her skiving off. Iowa woman Emmalee Bauer, 25, was employed by the Sheraton hotel company as a sales co-ordinator. While on the job she kept a 300-page personal journal detailing her efforts to avoid work. "This typing thing seems to be doing the trick," she wrote. "It just looks like I am hard at work on something very important." Bauer also wrote: "I am only here for the money and, lately, for the printer access. I haven't really accomplished anything in a long while ... and I am still getting paid more than I ever have at a job before, with less to do than I have ever had before. It's actually quite nice when I think of it that way. I can shop online, play games and read message boards and still get paid for it." (Source: AP)
* * *
Early Easter eggs: Mark Jarrett visited the Cadbury factory in Dunedin just before Christmas. He writes: "I was amazed to see that they were making Easter eggs in December. The tour guide informed us that they make them from June/July to January. So, what is the shelf-life of chocolate? [Note: in my house its shelf-life can be measured in seconds.] The guide said about a year."
* * *
A reader says the makeshift houseboat first pictured in Sideswipe last week has been destroyed by police at Port Waikato after a failed attempt by council authorities to serve notice. It was built and lived on by a man who, when approached by a police boat, allegedly attacked the vessel (and police) with an axe - one policeman was lucky to escape injury and the boat copped the axe on the bow. Police say the man threatened and swore at them and generally behaved in a "crazed" manner. He set fire to the van which served as his bedroom on the houseboat, then jumped overboard and swam towards the police boat. The police pulled him on board and secured him. The houseboat was then towed closer to shore where it was demolished by a digger, loaded on to trucks and carted to the dump. When the police arrested the man and wrecked the houseboat, a lot of locals came to applaud.
