If you’ve ever tut-tutted over the consequences of big-box stores and online retailers overtaking small businesses, you’ll be heartened to hear that some folks have figured out how to bring those old-fashioned mom-n-pop ideas about customer service into the digital age…with the help of a big ol’ corporation called eBay!

While browsing the auction site for some new shades, my pal Josh stumbled across one such example — a listing from a Florida-based eBayer who goes by the name of whiteblizzard70.

This goes on for several more paragraphs (see for yourself), but I’ll skip to my favorite part — the postscript.

(Josh decided not to bid.)

related: Top five musical crimes perpetrated by record store customers
extra credit: How do you get out of an ebay auction? [consumerist.com]

P.S. This post reminded me of another note my friend Josh told me about a few months back — a piece of reader mail he’d received as an editor at the music mag Blender. Granted, most readers who take the time to write in to magazines like Blender are at least a little bit…off, to say the least. But the last part of this letter — a response to an “Ask Blender” column about the urban legend that Debbie Harry of Blondie was once abducted by Ted Bundy — is genuinely spine-chilling. (Passive-aggressive? Not so much. Creepy? Um, yes.)

(A Passiveaggressivenotes.com public disservice announcement)

1. From Portland, Oregon…

2. From Williamsburg, Virginia…

3. From Miami, Florida…

related: Come get some

extra credit: Herpes: it’s got New York by the balls [nymag.com]

While waiting for the coffee maker to do its job, nickster2000 wandered over to the university notice board, where this musician-wanted ad caught his eye. He’s not a drummer, but says he considered ringing them up anyway. “I just really need to know what was so bad about Graham.”

related: I used to be your biggest fan

extra credit: Katlama on MySpace

“My friend Katelyn’s roommate left her this note before she went away for Memorial Day weekend last year,” says Monica in Boston. “I love how it starts off so BFF-like…then takes a sharp left into passive-aggressive territory.”

Adds Monica: “While Katelyn normally likes to avoid confrontation, I think this note pushed her over the edge. She didn’t empty the trash or rinse a dish the entire weekend, and they spent the next three months before their lease ended in a passive-aggressive standoff (purposely being loud when they knew the other had to study…’accidentally’ breaking the other’s belongings, etc.) Good times!”

related: (They match the plastic slipcover on the futon)

“Working in a university library, you get used to a lot of ‘quirky’ personalities,” says our anonymous submitter in Manhattan, Kansas. “So far, this is the only one that has decided to put pathology to paper.”

“On our sorority dorm floor, the girls decorate their doors with pictures and various sorority decorations,” explains Kimberly in Knoxville, Tennessee. But when one of Kimberly’s sorority sisters noticed a few of her pictures were missing, she was like, really not happy. So, over the course of several days, she made her feelings known.

Reports Kimberly: “No worries though — the pictures were finally returned.”

related: How hazing rituals are born

Writes Bibs in Tacoma, Washington: “My sophomore year in college, I was placed in a campus house with six other girls I didn’t know.  To say the least, we did not really get along, but we made a chore chart so we would all at least have a semi-clean house to live in.” At least, that was the idea.

Things broke down when one of the housemates, Cindy, was confronted with the reality of seven girls sharing one bathroom. After this little display, Bibs says, the chore wheel pretty much went to hell.

related: Landmine in my bloodline

Kasey in Tucson spotted this orgy of vending-machine notes in the Anthropology department of the University of Arizona. Says Kasey, “They just keep adding up. I think the Pepsi man is either amused by them or just doesn’t care.” Perhaps…or maybe he’s just hanging back until he has enough material for his dissertation on non-verbal communication among 21st century north americans.

related: Blame it on Coke
extra credit: “look up lithotripsy” [wikipedia]

With finals and thesis deadlines coming up, stress levels among grad students at UC-Berkeley have been running high (which means attention to the finer points of, say, apostrophe use, are running low). And now there’s a lunch thief on the loose!

Sadly, says our submitter, the note’s multi-pronged approach (guilt, threats, helpful advice) seems to have had no effect; the lunch thief remains at large. The next course of action? “We’re considering planting laxative-laced desserts.”

related: It must have been a pretty big bite

As far as post-coital “littering” goes, I’m guessing most dorm bathrooms have seen a lot worse than a pink t-shirt, no?

(And we certainly appreciate Matt in Greensboro for snapping the photo.)

related: Humbleshag-brag