ROUND ONE
BONER CANDIDATE #1: WELL, THE BOOBY TRAP WORKED
A man was shot and killed after he set off a booby trap in his own home on Thanksgiving night. Ronald Cyr, 65, of Van Buren, Maine, died of injuries sustained at his home on Nov. 28 after a handgun that was designed to fire upon anybody entering the front door of his residence went off. Officer Chandler Madore and the Van Buren Police Department, assisted by the U.S. Border Patrol, responded to a call indicating that Cyr had been shot. But when officers arrived on scene they discovered that he had been injured by a booby trap that he had allegedly set up himself, according to a statement released by the Van Buren Police Department. Read More
BONER CANDIDATE #2: BAD SANTA
A mall in British Columbia, Canada, kicked off the Christmas season by firing Santa Claus. After working as a mall Santa last year, Gary Haupt was ready to step back into Saint Nick’s shoes for the holidays. But after sharing some personal photos of himself as Santa fooling around with a friend on Facebook, Haupt found himself on the naughty list. “They brought me into the [mall’s management] office,” Haupt told Fox News. “That never happens. It was clear to me that something was afoot. They were not there to discuss it with me, they were there to give me the word.” Haupt isn’t entirely sure what happened, he said. He doesn’t know if somebody complained to the mall or if management saw the photos online. All he knows is that the photos had been deemed inappropriate and the mall fired him as Santa. Several days prior, Haupt had a friend over to his house and they decided to take some “silly” photos in the Santa suit. One of those pictures showed Haupt, dressed as Santa, appearing to grab his female friend’s chest. “They call the pictures dirty or inappropriate,” Haupt told CTV News. “They’re none of those things. It’s just hard for me to swallow that part.” “We have lots of laughs,” he explained to Fox News. “I wasn’t actually touching her, that wasn’t in the game plan at all.” Read More
BONER CANDIDATE #3: I THINK LITTLE MISS PERIOD IS KIND OF CUTE…
A Japanese department store has been slammed over its controversial plan to encourage female employees to wear ‘period badges’ when menstruating. The Daimaru Umeda department store in Osaka claims the badge aimed to boost culture and foster sympathy among co-workers, not trigger a public outcry. The badge, which would be worn alongside the employee’s name tag, features a manga character named ‘Seiri-Chan’, which loosely translates to ‘Little Miss Period’. One Twitter user said it would be “creepy” to know a sales assistant was on their period. While another woman labelled the badges “crazy”. One woman went as far as saying “there is absolutely no need to expose” this information, comparing it to “saying I am doing diarrhoea now”. A male executive, who declined to be named, said the company had received many complaints from the public. “Some of them concerned harassment, and that was definitely not our intention,” he said. Read More
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ROUND TWO
BONER CANDIDATE #1: NO BONUS, BUT YOU DO GET SPECIAL EMPLOYEE PRICING
Many people on social media expressed outrage and urged others to boycott Walmart because the retail giant reportedly does not pay its employees overtime for working the holidays and instead offers them a small in-store discount. The Guardian reported on Wednesday that Walmart offered its employees a 10 percent and 15 percent in-store discount for working the holidays. The 15 percent discount is only available for employees during two days in December, according to a flyer the publication obtained. In a statement, Walmart told Business Insider that no longer offering employees holiday pay has been its policy for a few years. “We simplified our paid time-off policies in 2016 to combine vacation, holiday, sick and personal time into one bucket,” a spokesperson told Business Insider. “As part of that change, we no longer offer holiday pay.” Read More
BONER CANDIDATE #2: MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM AUSCHWITZ?
Holocaust-themed Christmas ornaments, bottle openers and Valentine’s Day keychains being sold on Amazon ignited public outcry on Sunday, with a memorial and museum for the former Auschwitz Nazi death camp calling the items inappropriate and disrespectful. “Selling ‘Christmas ornaments’ with images of Auschwitz does not seem appropriate,” the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum tweeted while sharing photos of the items. “Auschwitz on a bottle opener is rather disturbing and disrespectful.” Though some of the items were quickly removed from the website, the former concentration camp’s memorial flagged several others that remained for sale. These items included a mouse pad and a light switch cover, which were both described by the seller as “Massacre Auschwitcz (sic) Birkenau Jewish Death.” A couples’ Valentine’s Day keychain set featuring a photo of a freight car that was used to deport Jews for extermination was also not immediately removed. “All sellers must follow our selling guidelines and those who do not will be subject to action, including potential removal of their account,” an Amazon spokesperson told HuffPost while confirming the removal of several of the items pointed out by the memorial on Twitter. The remaining items, which were alerted to the spokesperson by HuffPost, would be reviewed for removal, they said. Read More
BONER CANDIDATE #3: HAVING TWO DADDIES IS WRONG
When it was finally his turn to answer, the fifth grade boy knew exactly what he wanted to say. It was the week before Thanksgiving, and the substitute teacher had asked the boy’s class: “What are you thankful for this year?” Some of the kids had said turkey and mashed potatoes. One girl mentioned her dog. Another student joked about not having to go to school over the holiday. The boy’s response was a bit more serious. “I’m thankful that I’m finally going to be adopted by my two dads,” he answered. Students later said that the substitute snapped, “Why on earth would you be happy about that?” For the next 10 minutes she lectured the 30 kids in the class about her own views, how “homosexuality is wrong” and “two men living together is a sin.” She looked at the boy, too, and told him: “That’s nothing to be thankful for.” Three girls asked her to stop multiple times. But she continued, so they walked out of the room to get the principal. As the substitute was escorted out of the building, she was still arguing, trying to make her point, the boy’s fathers say they were told by school officials. “She also tried to blame our son,” said one of the boy’s dads, Louis van Amstel, “and told him that it was his fault that she went off.” Read More
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