Here’s how a company run by sensible people could have reacted to the recent change in the federal smoking age:

• Figure out what the new law is, and how best to adjust company policies in response to it.
• Let the employees know about those revised policies in a timely manner.

Here’s what this company did:

• Don’t noticeably react for a week.
• Send out a management memo, compiled by three different suits, that contradicts itself — changes are effective either December 20 or January 1.
• A couple of days later, send out another memo picking December 20 as the effective date. IF you guessed January 1 (as most of us at this location did, based on the ranks of the people who wrote that incoherent memo), don’t you feel foolish?
• Post printouts on the counter to let the customers know it was December 20.
• Wait until after January 1 and change the effective date on the counter printouts to January 1 because it sounds more reasonable.

For fuck’s sake.