What’s wrong with America today? If you ask Jason in Los Angeles, it’s people who don’t return their shopping carts. At least, that’s the action that prompted this note (which was originally attached the the upright cart itself).

That note, in turn, inspired this Dadaist creation:

related: Untitled (Broken Glass)

Okay, crazy cat lovers — enough. Let’s get back to a topic we can all agree on, like, say, how some people are OMG soooo dumb. (Lawls all around!) For example, Jeremy claims the colorful banner to the left was posted by an R.A. at a dorm on his California college campus.

related: You say “debackle,” I say…who let you into college?

extra credit: How do you pronounce “Qatar”? [Slate]

Although at first glance this card might seem pretty harmless, our submitter in Sacramento says she’s had enough experience with her new husband’s ultra-religious cousins to be able to read between the lines. (Just add “…before you’re both condemned to eternal damnation” to the end of the last sentence and you’ll get the idea.)

Adds our bristling bride: “I felt like telling her she could keep her $50 and her guilt trip, too, but decided I would have my revenge by having a long, happy, secular marriage instead.”

related: Waiting for the Rapture (and/or a thank you note)

extra credit: the front of the card

Well…lots of stuff.

And yet, somehow, the employees at this office in Edmonton still can’t quite make TP happen. (Maybe wrestling grizzlies is more their forte?)

Perhaps a visual aid (like this one from a Los Angeles apartment share) would be helpful?

Or maybe just a bit more encouragement would push someone over the edge?

(Probably not, though.)

related: Five approaches to TP maintenance

I’d nominate all three of these for inclusion in the encyclopedia entry for “petty office debates.”

Exhibit a) From  San Francisco:

Exhibit b) From Jeron in Dallas:

Exhibit c) From Monterey, California:

related: Completely valid rebuttals

Tim lives in Northwest D.C., “at the front of the gentrification wave” flowing east from Dupont Circle. “We have (only) one rundown/uninhabited house on the block,” Tim says, “and this morning one of the other neighbors decided to mow the front lawn to tidy it’s appearance a bit.” While taking out the trash later that evening, Tim noticed that his neighbor’s good deed had been rewarded by this neighborly thank-you note.

(As far as the smell goes…perhaps some people were under the same mistaken impression as those near this West Hollywood residence?)

related: Gentrification is insanit(ar)y

Joe is an elementary school teacher in Long Beach, California. On the last day of summer school, he got this goodbye letter from one of his students. “It was really cute and sweet,” Joe says. “However, she does mention in the card that I am ‘not that smart.’ I asked her why she thought that, and apparently it’s because she saw me ask another teacher a question about grammar. Hilarious.”

Brandy in Citrus Heights, California received a note with a similar mixed message from her then-six-year-old daughter, who’s now 14. Really, I’m just glad just this letter wasn’t signed “love, your girlfriend.” Because that would not be cute.

related: Mommy, I love you sometimes!!!!

extra credit: So Nice, So Smart [iLike]

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