Pictured above is a party-sized bag of Twisties, a snack you’ve in all probability by no means heard of until you’re from Australia or the encompassing area. Twisties are curly chips made primarily of floor corn and rice, and are available two commonplace flavors — cheese, as seen above, and rooster. They had been first launched in Australia in 1950 and have maintained reputation there, however haven’t discovered a following elsewhere (however you possibly can apparently get them on Amazon, the place the image above is from), making them a regional snack
And in case you use them incorrectly, you might get fired. Simply ask Tom Colella.
In 2016, Colella was finishing his twentieth 12 months as an electrician for a corporation out of Perth, Australia’s fourth most populous metropolis. Being {an electrical}, he was virtually at all times out within the discipline engaged on job websites — that’s, he didn’t work at a desk in his workplace. In concept, Colella and anybody else in an identical position might simply fake to do work, however in follow, his employer had a option to management for that. Because the Los Angeles Occasions defined, “like different workers at his firm, Colella had a private digital assistant [PDA] that tracked his assigned and accomplished job duties and in addition had a GPS that monitored his location.”
Generally, that truth alone would forestall an worker from taking part in hooky — in case your boss is aware of that you simply’re not the place you’re assigned to be, they’re probably going to fireside you. Somebody tipped off Colella’s employer about his golf behavior — he had, apparently, skipped work 140 occasions over the 2 years prior, hitting the hyperlinks as an alternative of doing his job. His employer checked the GPS data, and no visits to golf programs had been discovered. However there have been many occasions when, for causes unclear, the GPS information was lacking totally. So that they fired Colella.
Below native regulation, some terminated workers have the best to attraction such selections to the federal government’s Honest Work Fee, and Colella was a lined worker. So he introduced his grievance to the Fee, arguing that he did nothing unsuitable — per the Los Angeles Occasions, he “claimed the PDA had a glitch,” and that wasn’t his fault. However in the course of the inquiry, a brand new truth got here to gentle: Colella actually preferred Twisties. He was virtually at all times carrying a bag with him, and he had a bizarre behavior — he saved his work-issued PDA in his bag of chips. And this wasn’t a secret — as Ars Technica reviews, the Honest Work Commissioner assigned to Colella’s case famous that “Mr. Colella’s supervisors knew that he positioned his PDA within the [chip bag]” regularly. And that ought to have raised a pink flag for them — not simply because it’s bizarre to retailer your electronics in a bag of chips, however as a result of an organization that hires electricians ought to perceive the science behind such an motion.
As anybody who has ever opened a bag of chips is aware of, the luggage are sometimes lined with aluminum foil. And on this case, the bag was performing as a Faraday cage — an enclosure able to blocking electromagnetic fields — and one robust sufficient to maintain the comparatively weak GPS alerts from hitting the PDA. That — not some unusual need to grime up his PDA — was probably Colella’s objective in bagging his system. As NPR reported, the Honest Work Commissioner famous that “as an skilled electrician, Mr Colella knew that this bag would work as a [Faraday] cage, thereby stopping the PDA from working correctly — particularly the supply of standard GPS coordinate updates,”
Colella’s termination was upheld, and reportedly, he discovered work as an Uber driver — a job the place in case your GPS isn’t enabled, you’re not getting paid. It’s unclear if he’s nonetheless consuming Twisties, however he in all probability has extra flexibility if he needs to play extra golf.
Bonus truth: Had Colella waited a 12 months, he could have had one other protection — continental drift. Continents transfer barely over time, and GPS maps are static. That’s an issue if you would like correct maps, so on January 1, 2017, because the World Financial Discussion board notes, Australia shifted all of its GPS coordinates to account for continental drift. However that truth in all probability wouldn’t have helped Colella all that a lot; the shift was just one.8 meters.
From the Archives: The Drawback with Chinese language GPS: It’s simply totally different.
