Jess found this amazing treasure trove of notes — beginning, middle, and (sort of) end — while walking down Cornelia Street in New York’s West Village.

related: Rene’s letters, nothing but lies!

Writes our submitter in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: “A woman in my office was recently relocated to a new cubicle, apparently against her will. I don’t really know her, but I guess now I know not what not to use as an ice breaker!”

related: Really, enough about the weather.

Michael is a music teacher in New York, and one of his students, Aleks, a clarinet player with 15 years experience, recently moved to the city to start his master’s degree. “Coming from Ohio, he had no idea what he was getting into when practicing clarinet in his apartment in Queens,” says Michael. “Now he knows.”

related: Buskers & broomsticks

You’d think, as Jen from St. Louis did, that this carefully typed message (from the public toilet at the Golden Gate Bridge), is indisputably good advice.

But as Kim observed while studying abroad on the Caribbean island of St. Maarten, there’s an exception (explosion?) to every rule.

related: Poseidon’s a pervert

Two simple rules for using the garbage chute:

DO put your dog poo down the chute.

DON’T put your dog, Pooh, down the chute.

(Thanks to Jason in Ottawa and Catherine in D.C. for submitting!)

related: Garbage chute entitlement

Upon moving into their new college house this fall, Danny and his roommates at Boston College received this delightfully punctuated welcome letter from their next door neighbor — delivered via U.S. Postal Service, no less.

I, for one, can’t wait ’til the Ben Affleck adaptation comes out. We’ll have a “late night beer party” to celebrate!

related: Passive voice abuse

Okay, I’m totally calling bullshit on this note (spotted by Seth in the lobby of his Brooklyn apartment building).

If one of your neighbors knocked on your door and said, “Hey, so, I’ve been really needing a doormat….can I have yours?” —  would your response really be, “Well, since you asked…here you go!!”

Shame on you for being a bold-typefaced liar, notewriter!

related: Wrath mat

“New York Times reader” didn’t become a right-wing synonym for “elitist” out of nowhere. As the newspaper itself proclaims, “Times readers are a well-educated group. They expect sophisticated coverage and literate prose.”

But how does that literate sophistication hold up when the Gray Lady goes a-missin’? Well, if “self-aggrandizing smugness” counts as sophistication and “almost free of basic spelling and grammar errors” counts as “literate”  — remarkably well, actually!  (That whole “i before e” thing is pretty tricky, after all.)

Exhibit a) From Alan in Washington, DC:

Exhibit b) From an anonymous submitter in Lawrence, Kansas:

Exhibit c) From Elizabeth in Queens:

Unimpressed? Well, for the sake of comparison, let’s take a look at some notes by readers of less “sophisticated” newspapers. Like, say, the Washington Post:

Adds Robin in DC: “This person has also posted several other notes making various threats, including a promise to fill their paper with feces and glitter.”

As much as I appreciate that imagery, it’s actually New York’s other status-symbol-paper that inspires my favorite note of this genre — primarily because it so perfectly captures the essence of the Patrick Bateman/Gordon Gekko-worshipping tool I imagine the writer to be.

Our submitter, meanwhile, found the note more puzzling than anything else. Writes Danielle: “What kind of boring person steals the Wall Street Journal?”

And that, dear readers, is a question for another day.

related: Free markets, free people, free papers

extra credit: Dear Neighbors, Read This Note! [nytimes.com]

In one of my clearest memories of first grade, I distinctly remember my teacher telling us, on the first day of school, that the bathroom in the back of the classroom was only for emergencies. For non-emergencies, we’d have to wait until lunchtime. In my six-year-old mind, however, “emergency” meant only one thing: “throwing up.”  And so, when I had to go, I held it. And held it. Until…well, I wasn’t holding it anymore.

That’s right: It actually took wetting my pants for me to learn that the word “emergency” means very different things to different people — a concept some people apparently still haven’t figured out.

It’s unclear, for example, what might constitute a “citrus emergency” at this Pleasanton, California optometrist’s office. (Perhaps a masochistic mandarin peeling itself?)

You might think people would be a little more precise in their language on a military base. At Arizona’s Fort Huachuca, you’d only be about half right.

At Gustavo’s new office building in Seattle, it only took about a week — and about a bazillion false alarms— before someone decided a little clarification was necessary. (Sorta sounds like something you’d expect from a classroom of first-graders, no?)

Meanwhile, Andrew in Cirencester, England only noticed this sign after pushing open one of his office’s alarmed fire doors (triggering a sudden and unforeseen occurrence — i.e., ear-shattering noise).

related: Gee, thanks for the clarification

No, not the World Cup — we’re talkin’ good ol’ American college football. After all, as the homepage of the The Huntsville (Alabama) Times will tell you, kickoff is only a short 68 days away!

If you live in a town like Huntsville, Alabama, it’s beyond the scope of most folks’ imaginations that one simply wouldn’t care about something as earth-shatteringly important as football. As our submitter, a reporter at The Huntsville Times, explains, “We’re one hell of a football nation here — you either root for the University of Alabama Crimson Tide or Auburn University.”

So, our submitter concludes, “I’m guessing this letter comes from an Auburn fan.”

UPDATE: Another postcard-to-the-editor from the Huntsville Times’ number #1 reader!

related: A day in the life of a crank

extra credit: “The Death of Print Journalism”