"Do you know the Golden Rule? Those with the gold, make the rule."

The Scranton Times has stepped up its insulting of its carriers. In its Clarks Summit distribution center this morning, carriers arrived (clocks set forward all - or all except the Times, which made us then wait until 3:40 STANDARD time for the papers to arrive, just like on this day most years) to discover a new, big, duplicated-in-more-than-enough-places-to-be-impossible-to-miss, sign lecturing us about how we'll be canned if we take more papers than we're supposed to take, etc.

Well right off the bat, everybody including the managers knows that it's usually IMPOSSIBLE NOT to take a couple more papers than our official count, just to replace the couple that, on the average each Sunday, the Times screws us on by having failed to put all of the sections in. This screwing, by the Times, of its carriers out of sections (which the carrier can usually only notice if a paper seems light, a not-particularly-foolproof methodology), occasionally even amounts to a lot more than a couple. And when a customer complains about a paper being missing a section, the CARRIER gets charged $1.50!

So, the loudest (not including me, by the way; I tend to only be loud when I get home and write these diatribes) carriers rightly did some spleen-venting about how the new signs are an insult.

On the receiving end of these spleen-ventings was the manager's helper, whom I pitied for being, as usual, the only immediately-accessible, somewhat-representing-of-the-Times (even though I suspect he only gets paid chump change), person for the carriers to spleen-vent to.

The "best" one of the manager's helper's replies was that the signs are only aimed at the yet-to-be-identified abuser(s). However, he didn't get very far with that one, because if that were the case AND the Times had any respect for its carriers, why INSULT ALL of the carriers? There are already signs there saying - or should I say, more likely, bluffing - that there are video cameras around (and those signs have been there for as many years as I've known the place). So, why not ACTUALLY run a video camera (which wouldn't be Big-Brother-like at all, in a place that already SAYS that it has video cameras around) long enough to catch the abuser?

So, the REALLY best one of the manager's helper's replies was also the most honest one: "Do you know the Golden Rule? Those with the gold, make the rule."

Well that's when I piped up and said, "Wait until I buy the Times."