Joy’s mother is the type who says things like, “Joy! CLEAVAGE is not going to get you a JOB!” In one her more subtle moves, Joy says, “My mom clipped this ‘article’ out of her favorite nutjob newsletter and mailed it to me —with annotations to be sure I didn’t miss the point.”

Thanks for the new role model, Mom! Because, as everyone knows, Michelle Pfeiffer’s career has been propelled more than anything else by her “prudishness.”

related: Grandma’s advice: Be more like Bieber.

Our submitter, a bartender in D.C., might not be the world’s biggest Mariah Carey fan, but when a group of customers put “All I Want for Christmas is You,” on the jukebox last Saturday night, he didn’t complain. But when the same group queued the song up again — three times in a row — he invoked his bartender’s privilege and skipped it. After all, he says, “It was DECEMBER 4th. I gave them their money back, but they still kept calling me ‘Grinch.’”

I have to step in here and note that, yes, that song is like crack — once you’re hooked, one hit is never enough. But that’s when you go home and spend the 99 cents to download it so you can indulge your addiction on endless repeat without coughing up a quarter every time. However, money management not being the forte of most addicts, at the end of the night the holiday-happy patrons left behind this oh-so-classy note in lieu of a tip.

That very same weekend, meanwhile, Amy noticed that the bartender at one of her local haunts in Murrysville, Pennsylvania has taken a proactive approach to this particular problem. “Normally a super friendly place, I was sooo tempted to play ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ just to see what they would do.” (Instead, she held on to that feeling — privately — and took a picture.)

related: “You Can Call Me Arse”: A review of last night’s performance

extra credit: Jukebox Etiquette 101

At Nat’s office in York, England, one of his coworkers has been trying to bully everyone into coughing up some cash for an (admittedly worthy) charitable cause.

In Nat’s opinion, however, her guilt-heavy fund-raising techniques might benefit from a little fine-tuning…especially given that all seven of those special “charity pens” were nicked from the office supply closet.

related: Starve on!

“My grandmother has been telling my brother that his hair is too long for forever now,” our submitter in Texas writes, “and whenever she criticized his long hair, he’d tell her it was ‘in style.’”  Hello, loophole! Today Grandma left this clipping on the fridge for her grandson to find.

(By the way, if you’ve managed to avoid contact with the tween set lately and had no idea that this Justin Bieber character is supposedly “the world’s biggest pop star” — you’re not alone.)

And Grandma, if Seth doesn’t take the hint, maybe you’ll have to try Star Magazine‘s trick?

related: The overly-friendly coworker: ruining your day since you held the door for her that one time

extra credit: Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber

The Justin Bieber Guide for Old People [gawker.com]

Justin Bieber’s “hair trick” [youtube]

Christine in San Rafael, California says Sol Food is “literally the best thing about San Rafael.” One reason, she says? The restaurant “keeps this gem of a note right where it belongs — on display in the glass cabinet outside the front door, where most restaurants would keep a menu.”

Seeing as the note has been up for about a year and half so far, it seems Angelo’s threat hasn’t caused much concern. In fact, Christine says, “the place is so popular that it always has a line out the door, which (bonus!) allows me to read it over and over again.”

(See the lime-green exterior for yourself here and here.)

related: Wrath mat

Our anonymous submitter lives in what she says is a typical college apartment, one that is “not decorated according to any theme.” And yet, in a transformation a college freshman taking Lit 101 might describe as “Kafkaesque,” one of her roommates has been replaced by your [fill-in-your-own-ethnic-stereotype-here] grandmother.

Adds our submitter: “These weird towels wouldn’t dry two fingers, much less two hands, so we don’t use them anyway! (Maybe if they weren’t so ugly…)”

related: Text me at work if you want to talk!!

This oh-so-subtle note was posted by Mary’s former boss, “a pathetic professor in a backwater institution” where 90% of the graduate students happened to be Korean, Japanese, or Chinese.

“Nevermind that he doused himself with great lashings of Brut in an attempt to jazz up the bald-up-top-ponytail-in-back look he had going on,” Mary says. “There were a lot of things I could have said to him on a post-it, but I decided to be the big kid and quit.” Luckily for us, she swiped this note off the breakroom microwave first.

Interestingly, it seems fish-hating office workers elsewhere also share an affinity for clip art.

related: No smelly foods

Chonny lives in Manhattan apartment with three spirited roommates, and they enjoy, on occasion, knocking back a few glasses of wine for an impromptu roomie-bonding sing-a-long.

“One night around 10, after a particularly taxing day, we decided to bring the vibe down with a little Peter Gabriel,” Chonny says. “As we all belted out ‘In Your Eyes’ — with a couple of tears in ours — we heard a voice shout across the alley, “YOUR MUSIC SUCKS!” The next day, one of our uptown girls found this note pasted to the callbox downstairs.

Adds Chonny: “What really upsets me is that the writer doesn’t know the difference between Peter and Billy. Shall we move onto Bon Jovi?”

related: it was an ironic dance party, okay?; movin’ out (anthony’s song)