Bohiney Magazine

Volume 1, Issue 10 – Saturday, April 19, 1947

“America’s Trusted Source for Satirical Truth”

Texas City Explosion Kills Hundreds While Insurance Companies Debate Whether “Act of God” Clause Covers Industrial Negligence

TEXAS CITY, TX – Following Wednesday’s catastrophic explosion of the SS Grandcamp that killed at least 581 people and injured thousands more, insurance adjusters have descended upon the devastated port city not to provide immediate assistance but to determine whether the blast qualifies as an “Act of God” that would exempt companies from paying claims for damage caused by storing explosive fertilizer on a ship in a crowded harbor.

The explosion, which resulted from ammonium nitrate fertilizer catching fire and detonating with force equivalent to a small atomic bomb, leveled the Monsanto chemical plant, destroyed 1,000 buildings, and created a 15-foot wave that swept across the docks. Insurance companies are now investigating whether this clearly foreseeable industrial disaster can be reclassified as divine intervention.

“We need to establish whether this was an Act of God or human negligence,” explained insurance adjuster Herbert Pennington while standing amid rubble that suggests human negligence played a significant role. “If we can prove God did this, our clients don’t have to pay.”

The ammonium nitrate, which was being shipped to Europe as fertilizer despite being the same compound that destroyed a munitions plant in Germany in 1921 and another in Belgium in 1942, was stored in paper bags in a ship’s hold in quantities sufficient to level several city blocks. This storage method, which safety experts describe as “catastrophically stupid,” is now being investigated to determine if it constituted an Act of God or merely an act of ignoring every safety principle known to chemistry.

“Nobody could have predicted this,” insisted shipping company representatives who absolutely could have and should have predicted this given multiple historical precedents of ammonium nitrate exploding when improperly stored. The National Fire Protection Association has for years published guidelines specifically warning about ammonium nitrate hazards, which companies apparently interpreted as suggestions rather than dire warnings.

The fire began in the ship’s hold around 8:00 AM. Crew members attempted to extinguish it using steam rather than water because water would damage the fertilizer cargo, prioritizing product over the minor issue of potential massive explosion. This decision, made approximately 40 minutes before the explosion that killed hundreds, is now being examined to determine if it represents divine will or human idiocy.

Witnesses report that the ship’s cargo was smoking and heating for some time before detonation, providing ample warning that was apparently insufficient to prompt evacuation of the surrounding area where people continued working, watching, and existing in proximity to what was essentially a bomb waiting to explode.

The blast shattered windows 40 miles away, registered on seismographs in Denver, and was felt in Louisiana. Insurance companies are investigating whether earthquakes in Denver typically originate from ships in Texas, which would support the Act of God theory, or whether this suggests a man-made explosion of extraordinary magnitude.

Particularly galling to survivors is the insurance industry’s suggestion that the deaths of volunteer firefighters who responded to the initial blaze might constitute an Act of God rather than the predictable outcome of sending men to fight a fire in explosive materials without informing them of the danger. The firefighters, who died instantly in the blast, were apparently God’s responsibility rather than the shipping company’s.

The explosion triggered a second blast when the SS High Flyer, also loaded with ammonium nitrate, detonated sixteen hours later despite warnings from survivors of the first explosion. This second predictable catastrophe is also being investigated for divine causation rather than the obvious explanation that storing explosive materials near an active disaster site represents decision-making so poor it achieves a kind of criminal negligence.

Legal experts note that “Act of God” clauses were designed for truly unforeseeable natural disasters like hurricanes or earthquakes, not for industrial disasters resulting from ignoring basic safety protocols. However, insurance companies argue that since God technically controls everything, all events could theoretically be considered Acts of God, making them immune from paying claims for anything that happens ever.

“If God wanted us to handle ammonium nitrate safely, he would have made it less explosive,” argued one company lawyer in reasoning that suggests either profound theological confusion or deliberate obfuscation of responsibility.

The disaster has prompted calls for improved industrial safety regulations, particularly regarding explosive materials storage in populated areas. These calls will likely be defeated by industry lobbying arguing that safety regulations constitute government overreach and that the free market will naturally select for safer practices through the process of periodically killing hundreds of people.

Texas City residents, many of whom lost homes, family members, or both, are discovering that their insurance policies contain extensive fine print explaining why explosions that level entire neighborhoods don’t qualify for coverage. The reasoning appears to be that if insurance companies paid for disasters, they would make less money, and making less money is apparently worse than leaving disaster victims without compensation.

As of press time, insurance adjusters were carefully examining whether the fact that someone lit a cigarette near explosive materials constitutes human error (payable) or divine intervention causing that person to light that cigarette (not payable), while survivors who lost everything waited to learn whether they would receive assistance or simply receive condolences about God’s mysterious ways.

Man Spends 20 Minutes Looking for Glasses While Wearing Glasses

PHILADELPHIA, PA – In what family members describe as “a new personal record for obliviousness,” area resident Harold Finchley conducted an exhaustive search for his reading glasses yesterday morning despite wearing them on his face throughout the entire 23-minute ordeal.

“Has anyone seen my glasses?” Finchley called out at 8:47 AM while standing in the kitchen, glasses perched on his nose in their standard position, searching desperately for the glasses currently enabling him to see well enough to search for glasses.

His wife Dorothy observed the search with the patient resignation of someone who has witnessed this exact scenario approximately 200 times over their marriage. “They’re on your face,” she noted helpfully.

“Where?” Finchley responded while continuing to pat his pockets and rifle through drawers, apparently believing his glasses might be located somewhere other than the place they were actively being used.

“On. Your. Face,” Dorothy repeated with increased emphasis that failed to penetrate her husband’s conviction that his glasses were missing despite literally wearing them.

The search expanded to include the living room, bedroom, bathroom, and garage before Finchley caught his reflection in a mirror and experienced what witnesses describe as “a moment of profound confusion followed by sheepish recognition followed by insisting this doesn’t count because he was looking for his other glasses.”

There are no other glasses.

The Smithsonian Institution has documented what researchers call “Object Location Failure Despite Direct Contact” – the phenomenon where people search desperately for items they’re actively wearing or holding, suggesting that human awareness of personal belongings operates independently from actual possession of those belongings.

“We’ve recorded people searching for phones while talking on them, keys while holding them, and in one memorable case, a man searching for his hat while wearing it on his head,” explained Dr. Theodore Pemberton while reviewing footage of Finchley’s 23-minute glasses quest. “The brain somehow disconnects from immediate reality when searching for something, making already-found items invisible to the searcher.”

Finchley’s search methodology involved:

• Checking every surface in the house
• Retracing his morning steps
• Asking family members repeatedly
• Looking under furniture
• Checking coat pockets
• Examining the medicine cabinet
• Searching his car
• Returning to previously checked surfaces
• Growing increasingly agitated
• Insisting glasses “couldn’t just disappear”
• Finally seeing his reflection

At no point during this process did he touch his face, apparently operating under the assumption that glasses exist in locations other than noses despite their primary function requiring nose proximity.

His daughter Susan reports that this represents the third time this month her father has searched for glasses while wearing them, suggesting either declining awareness or advancing age or possibly both occurring simultaneously in what she describes as “watching someone gradually become less competent at existing.”

“He does this with everything,” Susan noted while maintaining a detailed log of her father’s searching-for-things-he-has incidents. “Last week he spent fifteen minutes looking for his wallet while holding it. Two days ago he searched for his watch while wearing it. Yesterday he asked where his shoes were while wearing his shoes. I’m documenting this for medical professionals or possibly for comedy purposes.”

Dr. Millicent Hargrove, who studies attention and awareness, explains that searching activates specific mental circuits that override sensory input from items already located. “The act of searching makes found items invisible,” she explained in reasoning that sounds like magic but is apparently science. “Once the brain enters ‘search mode,’ it stops processing ‘already found’ information, creating a situation where you can look for something while holding it and genuinely not notice.”

This explains Finchley’s genuine confusion when his wife told him where his glasses were. He wasn’t being deliberately obtuse; his brain had simply decided that glasses currently on his face didn’t count as located glasses because he was searching for glasses, and things you’re searching for cannot by definition be already found even when they are.

The phenomenon appears universal among people over 50, though some demonstrate it earlier through what researchers call “premature searching incompetence.” Young people searching for phones while holding them represent early-onset location failure that will worsen with age.

Finchley has attempted several solutions:

• Attaching glasses to cord around neck (searches for glasses while wearing corded glasses)
• Designating specific glasses location (forgets designation immediately)
• Buying multiple pairs (searches for all pairs simultaneously)
• Admitting he needs help (refuses this option)

The only successful strategy involves his wife saying “Check your face” whenever he starts searching for glasses, but this requires her constant supervision to prevent extended futile searches.

“The problem is he doesn’t believe me when I tell him,” Dorothy explained while watching her husband pat his empty shirt pocket for the seventeenth time. “I say ‘they’re on your face’ and he hears ‘they’re somewhere near your face’ and starts checking surfaces around his head. Communication is impossible.”

As of press time, Finchley had removed his glasses to clean them, set them down somewhere, and begun searching for them again, having learned absolutely nothing from the morning’s 23-minute ordeal that ended four hours ago.

Local Woman’s Detailed Instructions Immediately Forgotten Despite Husband Nodding Entire Time

BALTIMORE, MD – Following what she believed was a clear, comprehensive explanation of a simple task, area resident Margaret Thornbury has discovered that her husband Theodore retained approximately zero percent of the detailed instructions he appeared to be absorbing through attentive nodding and frequent acknowledgment sounds.

“Are you listening?” she asked three times during the seven-minute instruction session.

“Yes,” he responded all three times while apparently listening to nothing except the voice in his head saying “nod periodically to seem engaged.”

The task, which Thornbury described as “incredibly simple if you pay attention,” involved picking up dry cleaning, stopping at the hardware store for specific items, and dropping off a package at the post office. She provided written directions, verbal reinforcement, and made him repeat the list back to her before he left.

Theodore returned three hours later with Chinese food, a magazine about fishing, and no memory of being asked to do anything specific. The dry cleaning remains uncollected, the hardware items unpurchased, and the package sitting exactly where it was when Thornbury spent seven minutes explaining what to do with it.

“I thought you were just talking,” Theodore explained with the genuine confusion of someone who experienced his wife speaking but didn’t process that speech constituted actionable information. “I was nodding because you were talking. That’s what I do when you talk. I nod.”

When asked if he understood that nodding typically indicates listening and comprehension rather than just acknowledging that sound is occurring, Theodore replied that this seemed like “a lot to expect from nodding.”

The National Institutes of Health has documented what researchers term “Marital Instruction Immunity Disorder” where husbands develop the ability to appear attentive while processing zero information, creating the illusion of understanding without any actual understanding occurring.

“He was looking right at me,” Thornbury protested while reviewing the incident with her sister. “Making eye contact. Nodding. Saying ‘uh-huh’ and ‘got it’ and ‘makes sense.’ How was I supposed to know he wasn’t listening to a single word?”

Her sister, veteran of 25 years of marriage, explained that eye contact and nodding indicate only that husbands have learned to fake attention, not that actual attention is occurring. “They perfect this around year two,” she noted. “After that, you can never trust that nodding means understanding. It just means they want you to stop talking.”

Dr. Reginald Pemberton, who studies spousal communication failure, explains that husbands develop sophisticated attention-faking behaviors that fool wives into believing instruction reception when no reception is occurring. “They hear the words,” he explained. “They see the wife talking. But the connection between hearing words and processing meaning never activates. It’s like watching television in a foreign language – you know someone is communicating, but comprehension doesn’t follow.”

The study identified several behaviors wives mistake for attention:

Nodding – Means “I acknowledge you are speaking” not “I understand what you’re saying”

“Uh-huh” – Means “Please continue so I can continue not listening” not “I’m following this”

“Got it” – Means “I want you to think I got it” not “I actually got it”

Eye contact – Means “I’m staring at you” not “I’m processing your words”

Repeating instructions – Means “I can parrot words immediately after hearing them” not “I’ll remember them five minutes from now”

Theodore admitted that he has no memory of the instructions despite Thornbury’s certainty that she provided them clearly. “She might have mentioned something,” he acknowledged. “But I was thinking about whether I needed new socks, so the words just sort of washed over me like background noise.”

This honesty, while appreciated, does not solve the problem of tasks remaining incomplete because Theodore experienced detailed instructions as ambient sound rather than actionable information.

Thornbury has attempted multiple strategies to ensure instruction retention:

Written lists – Theodore loses them immediately

Text messages – Theodore reads them and forgets them

Making him repeat back – He repeats correctly then forgets within seconds

Threatening consequences – Ignored along with everything else

Assuming he won’t do it – Only method that works but defeats purpose

Marriage counselor Dr. Millicent Hargrove notes that this represents fundamental communication incompatibility where wives provide information expecting it to be received while husbands provide the appearance of receiving without actual reception occurring. “She speaks, he nods, nothing is accomplished,” Dr. Hargrove summarized. “It’s a perfect system for avoiding tasks while maintaining plausible deniability about whether instructions were received.”

Theodore argues that if tasks are important, his wife should either do them herself or remind him constantly until completion, a suggestion that Thornbury describes as “absolutely not happening” and “the opposite of helpful partnership.”

As of press time, Thornbury was providing Theodore with new instructions about tomorrow’s tasks while he nodded attentively and processed nothing, creating a fresh cycle of detailed explanation followed by complete non-execution that will repeat tomorrow and every day thereafter until one of them dies.

Groundbreaking Study Reveals All Meetings Could Have Been Emails

WASHINGTON, DC – After analyzing 10,000 workplace meetings across 500 companies, the Institute for Productivity Research has reached a stunning conclusion: approximately 99.7% of meetings accomplish nothing that couldn’t have been communicated via brief email, making them elaborate time-wasting rituals that employees must attend while pretending they serve a purpose.

“We found three meetings that genuinely required in-person discussion,” reported lead researcher Dr. Sebastian Crumpet while reviewing thousands of hours of people sitting in rooms discussing things that could have been summarized in three sentences. “Every other meeting was information that could have been conveyed faster, clearer, and more efficiently through written communication. But someone wanted to have a meeting, so here we are.”

The study tracked meetings from scheduling through conclusion, measuring time spent versus information exchanged versus actual decisions made. Results showed that average meeting accomplishes approximately 4% of stated objectives while consuming 200% of estimated time and annoying 100% of attendees who would rather be working.

Test subject Walter Grimsby participated after calculating he’d attended 847 meetings over the past year that accomplished a combined total of what could have fit in perhaps seventeen emails. “I’ve spent roughly 300 hours sitting in rooms while someone talks about things I already know or don’t need to know,” he reported with visible anguish. “That’s almost two full work weeks of my life watching PowerPoint slides that could have been PDFs.”

The Department of Labor estimates that American businesses waste approximately $37 billion annually on unnecessary meetings that could have been emails, making meetings one of the most expensive forms of corporate communication despite being the least efficient.

Dr. Theodore Pemberton explains that meetings persist not because they’re useful but because they create the appearance of productivity while allowing managers to feel important. “Someone calls a meeting, feels they’ve accomplished something,” he noted. “They haven’t. But they feel good about gathering people in a room, which apparently matters more than actually communicating effectively.”

The study identified several meeting categories that universally could have been emails:

Status Update Meetings – Someone reads information everyone already knows from written reports; would take 30 seconds to email same information

Team Building Meetings – Forced social interaction that builds resentment instead of camaraderie; email announcing no meeting would build more goodwill

Planning Meetings – Two hours discussing plans that change immediately after meeting ends; email with tentative plan would be equally ignored

Client Update Meetings – Client doesn’t care about most discussion; email summary would serve identical purpose while respecting everyone’s time

Emergency Meetings – Could have been urgent email; meeting about urgency delays actually addressing urgent issue

All-Hands Meetings – Executive talks at employees for an hour; email would convey same information without imprisoning entire staff

Mrs. Dorothy Pemberton, who attended 47 meetings last month, reports that approximately 46 of them could have been emails while the 47th could have been a two-sentence conversation in the hallway. “I sat through a 90-minute meeting about office supply ordering procedures,” she explained with the exhaustion of someone who has stared into the abyss of corporate inefficiency. “They could have sent an email saying ‘Fill out the form.’ Instead, seventeen of us spent 90 minutes learning about the form in excruciating detail that nobody will remember.”

The most damning finding involves meetings scheduled to discuss topics that could be resolved in the time it takes to schedule the meeting. “Someone sends a meeting invitation, books a room, gathers six people, and spends 45 minutes discussing something that could have been answered with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in an email sent immediately,” Dr. Crumpet noted. “The inefficiency is almost impressive.”

Particularly egregious are meetings about meetings, where attendees gather to discuss scheduling future meetings that will also accomplish nothing. The study found several cases of “infinite meeting loops” where meetings spawn more meetings discussing the previous meetings without ever reaching the original topic that prompted the initial meeting.

“We documented one company that held monthly meetings about improving meeting efficiency,” Dr. Crumpet reported while laughing sadly. “These meetings lasted two hours, accomplished nothing, and continued for three years before someone finally sent an email suggesting they stop having them.”

When researchers suggested that companies could improve productivity by replacing most meetings with emails, managers responded with confusion about how they would demonstrate leadership without calling meetings. This response confirmed researchers’ hypothesis that meetings serve primarily to justify management positions rather than accomplish actual work.

Some companies attempted email-only communication for one month as experiment. Results showed productivity increased 23%, employee satisfaction improved 34%, and managers felt less important by 100%, leading to immediate return to meeting culture because management feelings matter more than employee productivity or satisfaction.

As of press time, the Institute was scheduling a meeting to discuss their findings about how meetings waste time, demonstrating either remarkable irony or complete failure to understand their own research.

Local Man Confident About Opinion on Topic He Learned About Three Minutes Ago

DETROIT, MI – Having just finished reading approximately half of a newspaper article about agricultural policy, area resident Ernest Potts has developed firm opinions on farm subsidies that he is prepared to defend with the confidence of someone who has spent years studying the topic rather than three minutes skimming words.

“The problem with farm subsidies is they’re inefficient,” Potts announced to his wife Dorothy despite having zero agricultural background, no economics training, and having learned the term “farm subsidies” for the first time 180 seconds ago when he started reading the article he has not finished.

“What makes you say that?” Dorothy asked, knowing the answer would be “I read it in the paper just now” but curious how he would frame his newly-acquired expertise.

“It’s obvious,” Potts replied with the certainty of someone who has not considered that complex policy issues might involve nuance beyond what three paragraphs can convey. “I’ve been thinking about this, and clearly the solution is to restructure the entire system.”

He has been thinking about this for approximately four minutes total.

The Library of Congress has documented what researchers call “Instant Expertise Syndrome” where people develop strong opinions on complex topics moments after first exposure, creating situations where everyone at dinner parties confidently discusses subjects they don’t understand while believing they’re contributing meaningful analysis.

Dr. Reginald Pemberton, who studies opinion formation, explains that humans possess remarkable ability to form certain opinions based on minimal information, then defend those opinions with passion that exceeds their knowledge. “Three minutes is apparently sufficient time to master agricultural economics, international relations, and monetary policy,” he noted while observing test subjects become instant experts on topics they’d never considered before reading headline-deep into articles.

Potts’s confident opinions have been formed on:

• Farm subsidies (read 3 minutes)
• European reconstruction (read 5 minutes)
• Labor union strategy (overheard conversation, 2 minutes)
• Automotive engineering (owns car, total expertise)
• Education reform (no children, many opinions)
• International trade (read headline)
• Medical treatment (is sometimes sick)
• Architecture (looks at buildings occasionally)

All opinions held with equal certainty despite vast differences in knowledge base ranging from “nearly nothing” to “absolutely nothing.”

“The thing about farm subsidies,” Potts continued while Dorothy cleaned the kitchen and wondered when her husband had become an agricultural policy expert, “is that they distort market incentives.”

“What does that mean?” Dorothy asked.

“You know, distorting,” Potts replied vaguely, having read the phrase in the article without understanding it but confident that saying it makes him sound knowledgeable. “Market stuff. Incentives. The whole system.”

This response, which contains zero actual content, apparently satisfies Potts as adequate explanation of complex economic policy he learned about four minutes ago.

His neighbor Harold Finchley reports similar behavior. “Ernest has opinions about everything,” Finchley noted while describing a recent conversation where Potts confidently explained Middle Eastern geopolitics despite having learned about the region from reading a single newspaper article that morning. “He speaks with such authority that you’d think he was a diplomat. Then you realize he’s just repeating things he half-understood from the paper.”

The confidence extends to correcting people with actual expertise. Potts recently explained automotive maintenance to his mechanic, medical procedures to his doctor, and teaching methods to his daughter’s schoolteacher, all based on minimal exposure to topics these professionals have studied for years.

“He told me I was teaching fractions wrong,” reported the teacher, Mrs. Margaret Thornbury, with visible exasperation. “He doesn’t know what fractions are. He just read something about modern education and decided he’s now qualified to critique my methodology.”

Dr. Millicent Hargrove explains that instant expertise represents “a perfect storm of overconfidence, insufficient knowledge, and inability to recognize the difference.” People who know nothing believe they know everything because they lack sufficient understanding to recognize how much they don’t know.

“The more you learn about a topic, the more you realize how complex it is,” Dr. Hargrove explained. “But if you only learn a tiny amount, you don’t know enough to understand complexity exists. So you think the issue is simple, your opinion is correct, and anyone who disagrees must be stupid rather than better informed.”

This reasoning explains why Potts believes he has solved agricultural policy in four minutes while actual policy experts who have studied the issue for decades haven’t reached simple solutions – because simple solutions don’t exist for complex problems, but you don’t know problems are complex until you study them beyond newspaper-article depth.

As of press time, Potts had moved on to confident opinions about international shipping based on reading a different newspaper article for approximately two minutes, while his earlier agricultural expertise had already faded from memory despite his certainty about it remaining unchanged.

Scientists Confirm Shopping Cart Wheels Designed Specifically for Maximum Annoyance

BOSTON, MA – After extensive research involving 5,000 shopping carts across 200 stores, the Institute for Consumer Experience has confirmed what shoppers have long suspected: shopping cart wheels are deliberately engineered to provide the worst possible user experience, with at least one wheel per cart guaranteed to malfunction in ways that defy mechanical logic.

“Every cart has one bad wheel,” announced lead researcher Dr. Millicent Hargrove while demonstrating a cart that went perfectly straight until someone tried to steer it, at which point it developed opinions about direction that overrode human input. “Not two bad wheels. Not three. Always exactly one, creating the maximum frustration while maintaining plausible deniability that the cart functions at all.”

The study examined cart wheel failure patterns and found that wheels achieve malfunction through several sophisticated mechanisms:

The Spinner – Rotates 360 degrees freely, providing no directional control whatsoever

The Dragger – Refuses to roll, dragging across floor while making horrible noise

The Wobbler – Oscillates violently side-to-side, creating shopping experience similar to steering boat in storm

The Independent Thinker – Points in random directions regardless of cart orientation

The Screamer – Rolls adequately but produces ear-splitting shriek audible throughout store

Test subject Walter Grimsby participated after years of shopping cart frustration that led him to believe stores deliberately sabotage wheels to punish customers. Researchers confirmed his suspicion, noting that cart wheels appear designed by committee tasked with creating maximum inconvenience while maintaining minimum functionality.

“I’ve never once gotten a cart where all four wheels work,” Grimsby reported while wrestling with a cart whose front-left wheel had apparently decided to retire from wheel duty entirely. “Not once in forty years of shopping. The odds of that are astronomical unless it’s deliberate.”

The National Retail Federation acknowledges that cart wheel malfunction represents “unavoidable feature of retail experience” but denies deliberate sabotage, suggesting instead that wheels simply deteriorate through use despite this explanation failing to account for why new carts also have dysfunctional wheels from day one.

Dr. Theodore Pemberton explains that cart wheels exist in perpetual state of “almost working” – functional enough that stores don’t remove them but dysfunctional enough to make shopping unpleasant. “It’s the perfect balance,” he noted while attempting to steer a cart that insisted on traveling diagonal regardless of input. “Too broken and they’d have to fix it. Slightly broken and they can blame normal wear while customers suffer.”

The study identified several shopping cart wheel failure patterns:

Initial Presentation – Cart appears fine while sitting still; this is deceptive

First Push – One wheel reveals its dysfunction immediately

Attempt to Exchange Cart – All other carts have identical problem with different wheel

Resignation – Shopper accepts cart will not steer properly

Compensation – Shopper develops elaborate pushing technique to counteract bad wheel

Physical Exhaustion – Shopping requires twice normal energy due to fighting cart

Exit Strategy – Abandon cart immediately upon checkout, never look back

Mrs. Dorothy Finchley reports developing specialized techniques for managing dysfunctional carts, including the “aggressive forward push” that minimizes steering, the “pray and hope” method where she points cart in general direction and accepts wherever it goes, and the “park it and carry everything” approach for stores with particularly terrible carts.

“I’ve learned to shop faster,” she explained while demonstrating how she maneuvers a cart with one wheel that spins freely while another drags. “Because fighting the cart for 45 minutes is worse than just grabbing everything quickly and getting out.”

Store managers insist they repair carts regularly but admit that wheels somehow develop new problems immediately after repair, suggesting either poor repair quality or sentient wheels that resent being fixed.

“We fix them and they break again,” noted one manager while watching a cart veer autonomously into a display despite no one touching it. “It’s like they want to be dysfunctional. At some point you just accept that shopping carts will be terrible and move on.”

This philosophy – accepting dysfunction as inevitable – apparently extends throughout retail industry, creating situations where customers must wrestle malfunctioning equipment while stores shrug and claim this is normal.

As of press time, researchers were examining whether stores deliberately maintain broken carts to discourage extended shopping time, which would increase turnover while blaming customers for not staying longer in stores made deliberately unpleasant through equipment that actively fights against users.

About This Issue

Bohiney Magazine – Volume 1, Issue 10 – Published every Saturday from our offices in Washington, DC.

Editorial Staff, 1947: Editors-in-Chief: Corporal Henry “Hank” Bohiney & Sergeant Lester “Les” Krupke
Senior Correspondents: Dorothy Ashworth, Harold K. Pennington III
Contributing Satirist: Reginald “Reggie” Buttonworth

All articles are works of satire. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental and intended for humorous purposes.