It reminded me of a job nigh on 25 years ago I had - I worked at a large insurance firm as part of a team delivering a specialist service to high value customers...but it was often under-subscribed so if things were quieter we'd get roped into doing all manner of different tasks to keep us busy/help out.
One thing we occasionally got roped into was opening returned mail from mail-shots advertising 'over 50s whole of life' insurance (basically a policy over 50s would take out with guaranteed payment on death that would primarily be used to cover funeral costs).
The mail shots were sent with a pre-paid envelope and a form to fill in to buy the product. It's going back a while now but some days it'd be 100s of letters coming back - my rough estimate would be:
* ~2-3% of the return envelopes were people buying the product
* ~95% were people return the application form in ripped up form
* ~1-2% were people sending something weird back
The weird stuff we got back varied massively, but a few that have lived long in my memory:
* A sheet of paper with a hand written note saying they'd farted on it
* Toe-nail clippings
* A stash of cuttings taken from pretty graphic porn magazines
* Hand written notes, often so apoplectic in their rage that they were hilarious to read
* 'Filled in' forms but where all the information was clearly fake/puns/nonsense ('Mr Hugh Janus' that sort of thing)
* Randomly (to me at least) peeled off labels from jars/etc. were quite common to get back
For what was a pretty dull task (open envelopes, if genuine, scan for the processing team and return a 'parker pen' to the applicant, if not dispose of) the occasional weird responses we'd get made the task much more amusing.
{all mail had already been through some sort of security scan process for metals/etc. so we didn't tend to get anything truly dodgy back}
Apparently there used to be people who would buy the policy purely for the parker pen. They'd get the pen then cancel the policy for a full refund. There's some weird people out there.
reminds me of the Lizardman's constant
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
I am working on a game myself, maybe I should reach out to see if it’s something Panic might be interested in publishing…
