{"id":1161,"date":"2005-03-16T22:22:53","date_gmt":"2005-03-17T02:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2005\/03\/16\/sweet-small-revenge\/"},"modified":"2005-03-16T22:22:53","modified_gmt":"2005-03-17T02:22:53","slug":"sweet-small-revenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2005\/03\/16\/sweet-small-revenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweet, small revenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Some people make a game out of getting even with the smaller, most annoying facets of modern life<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I take all the ads that get put into my bills and put them in the
\nreturn envelopes so that the companies can experience the same joy of
\ntrying to figure out what’s relevant and what’s garbage.<\/p>\n

Some people take it really far.<\/p>\n

\n

Wesley A. Williams spent more than a year exacting his revenge
\nagainst junk mailers. When signing up for a no-junk-mail list failed to
\nstem the flow, he resorted to writing at the top of each unwanted item:
\n“Not at this address. Return to sender.” But the mail kept coming
\nbecause the envelopes had “or current resident” on them, obligating
\nmail carriers to deliver it, he said.<\/p>\n

Next, he began stuffing
\nthe mail back into the “business reply” envelope and sending it back so
\nthat the mailer would have to pay the postage. “That wasn’t exacting a
\nheavy enough cost from them for bothering me,” said Mr. Williams, 35, a
\nmiddle school science teacher who lives in Melrose, N.Y., near Albany.<\/p>\n

After
\nchecking with a postal clerk about the legality of stepping up his
\nefforts, he began cutting up magazines, heavy bond paper, and small
\nstrips of sheet metal and stuffing them into the business reply
\nenvelopes that came with the junk packages. <\/p>\n

“You wouldn’t
\nbelieve how heavy I got some of these envelopes to weigh,” said Mr.
\nWilliams, who added that he saw an immediate drop in the amount of
\narriving junk mail. A spokesman for the United States Postal Service,
\nGerald McKiernan, said that Mr. Williams’s actions sounded legal, as
\nlong as the envelope was properly sealed. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I have nothing but admiration for this man.<\/p>\n

What do you do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some people make a game out of getting even with the smaller, most annoying facets of modern life. I take all the ads that get put into my bills and put them in the return envelopes so that the companies can experience the same joy of trying to figure out what’s relevant and what’s garbage. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-day2day"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-iJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}