To All at Outside: Please Stop Stealing the Ice

Offices are so deceptive. They’re blandly decorated and well lit, and everyone in them acts “professional,” even though underneath it all, they’re seething with fear and insecurity and angst and irritation. When you think about it, they’re really weird, these offices: It’s just bunches of people grouped together at random, forced into the same building, day after day after day, breathing the same stale air and performing the same menial tasks and occasionally suffering horrible personal indignities, all in pursuit of a fucking paycheck. It’s crazy, actually. Still, we do it. Day in and day out, we do it. But every once in a while, someone breaks the banality of routine by going completely apeshit.

It might be a little thing that sets them off, a missing snack or a dirty bathroom, but whatever it is, the person will become so incensed that they will see no other recourse than to sit down at his or her desk and pen or type a furious missive to the entire company. A missive that says, in essence: “Enough! What are we, animals?!”

Here at Daily Intel, we believe these acts of bravery deserve a wider audience. That their howls should be heard above and beyond their carpeted cubicle walls. Which is why, earlier today, we published a note from a Gourmet staffer that, though on the surface was about dirty dishes, was really about class issues and feeling disrespected. And now we have received an e-mail sent to the staff at Outside, from someone who is fed up with people stealing her ice. The level of outrage it contains was was perplexing to the recipients of the e-mail, our tipster tells us, not least because the refrigerator at Outside comes equipped with an ice machine. But the ice, of course, was not really the point.

Without further ado, the email, in all of its exclamation-point-riddled glory:

From: “Redacted”

Date: July 13, 2009 10:51:33 AM MDT

To: (all of Outside Magazine)

Subject: Sad

Hello All,

You know, it makes me sad to think that some Outsiders would have so little respect for other Outsiders. It makes me wonder how friends & family are treated.

I spend MY money on ice for my purposes, but I have no problem sharing. All I ask is a little common courtesy and little note saying someone needed some ice. Instead I come back from the weekend and my whole bag of ice has disappeared!

I hate to harp on something so trivial, but this is the 3rd time this has happened. And this last time, the bag was clearly marked.