Watercooler Stories

Police: Mailman took 7,000+ coupons

NEW YORK, Feb. 1 (UPI) -- Police said a postal worker stole coupons from his New York route and sold them at steep discounts on eBay to help pay his mortgage.

Investigators said Thomas Tang, 38, took more than 7,000 coupons from stacks dispersed on his route and those stored at the Corona branch where he worked, the New York Post reported.

Tang told police he made $35,000 from JC Penny coupons alone selling them on eBay. Investigators said they were working to determine how much money Tang received from similar schemes involving coupons from Kohl's and Lowe's.

"I have two small children, and my wife is pregnant," court documents quote Tang as telling police. "I also have a mortgage, and I have to pay cash for my children's baby sitter. I did not want this to happen, but it was the only way I could avoid having my house foreclosed on."

Tang is charged with felony grand larceny.

Student gets $637 fine for swearing

MESQUITE, Texas, Feb. 1 (UPI) -- A Texas high school student said she took on a job waiting tables to pay $637 in fines resulting from her use of a profanity in a classroom.

Victoria Mullins, 17, a senior at North Mesquite High School in Mesquite, said she was sent to the principal's office after using a profanity in teacher Michelle Lene's class Oct. 6 and the school resource officer issued her a $340 ticket for disorderly conduct/abusive language, The Dallas Morning News reported.

Mullins pleaded not guilty Oct. 21 but failed to show for a Nov. 18 court hearing, resulting in a $100 penalty, plus a $50 fee when a warrant was issued for her arrest Jan. 21 and a $147 collection fee.

"I didn't really know what to do. I didn't have the money to pay for it," she said.

Mullins said she is waiting tables to pay off the fine.

School district spokesman Ian Halperin said parents should take warning from the incident.

"If your kids do something, there's a way to handle it to mitigate these situations before you get to this point," Halperin said.

Study: Men retain less from sexy anchors

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Feb. 1 (UPI) -- Men tend to retain less information and women more from female TV news anchors dressed in a "sexually alluring manner," researchers in Indiana say.

Elizabeth Grabe, professor of telecommunications, and Lelia Samson, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Telecommunications in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University, said their study involved showing about 400 people one of two videos featuring the same 24-year-old woman in different styles of dress.

Grabe and Samson said men tended to rate the woman's professionalism higher when viewing the video of the woman dressed in clothing accentuating her waist-to-hip ratio, a necklace drawing attention to her neckline and red lipstick as compared with the men shown the video featuring the woman in a shapeless outfit and only subtle makeup.

However, the researchers said men viewing the more sexually alluring version retained less information and rated her competence lower for reporting on hard news topics.

The team said female viewers did not show much of a difference in rating the woman's competency for the two videos, but they retained more information when shown the sexualized version.

Grabe and Samson said they plan a follow-up study to further their research.

Homeless couple win Super Bowl trip

GREEN BAY, Wis., Feb. 1 (UPI) -- A homeless Wisconsin couple are on their way to the Super Bowl after uttering the prize-winning phrase to a "mystery man" walking the streets of Green Bay.

Ouida Wright said she and her boyfriend, Aaron, who both live at St. John's homeless shelter in Green Bay, said they left a local soup kitchen Saturday and heard from passersby about the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau's contest, WLUK-TV, Green Bay, reported.

The contest involved a mystery man walking the streets of the city waiting for someone to ask the secret phrase: "Have you been to Dallas lately?"

Wright said the fourth person they asked revealed himself as the mystery man.

"I'm homeless and I thought someone was just messing with me," Wright said Sunday on WLUK's "Good Day Wisconsin."

"Then we saw the cameras. We had 90 cents in our pockets and we have won a package that people would have offered thousands of thousands of dollars for," she said.

The couple initially worried they wouldn't be able to afford the trip, but the Dallas Convention and Visitor's Bureau announced during Sunday's broadcast it has decided to cover the pair's airfare.

"I promised myself I was not going to cry and then you go and do this," Wright said.