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Let’s be honest for a moment — even if you’re working today, chances are that you mentally checked out before you even stepped into the office. It’s okay; you can probably afford to daydream a bit today while you clockwatch and stare at your boss’s empty office wondering why they always get to take the day off but you have to take one for the team. So here’s a way to kill a few minutes by testing your recall of some of the stories we’ve covered in the last year. So dig into the quiz below and see how much you remember from the consumer-related news of 2014. It’s fun for the whole family. View Survey by Chris Morran via Consumerist

( vision63 ) Quick, someone grab all the deer and salt shakers you can find and start licking/scooping: After a storage facility wall partially collapsed at Morton Salt in Chicago, the Acura dealership next door became the victim of a salt avalanche that completely buried at least three cars and damaged up to 11. The wall came down around 2 p.m. in the Goose Island neighborhood of Chicago (also known for the beer of that name from the area), reports ABC7 , dumping enough white stuff to cover three cars and crush the tops of others. A total of 11 vehicles were damaged, four of which were new to the dealership and others that belong to customers waiting for service to be completed on them. Firefighters think the salt was piled too high near the wall by workers, putting a strain on the decades-old wall that it simply couldn’t bear. In the meantime, cleanup is underway, while the dealership works to replace damaged cars and get customers on the road without a fine dusting of powder. MORTO...

The clock hasn’t even struck midnight yet, and already we’re reminiscing about the year gone by. For us here at Consumerist, 2014 wasn’t only about how many times our stories were read, or who was clicking where, but about the process of bringing those stories to our readers and how we felt about working on them. From eggs gadgets to the demise of for-profit schools, from Fitbit to Comcast, we’d like to present our editors’ favorite picks of 2014, along with a few honorable mentions. KATE COX Favorite post : Comcast Says Mobile Data Is Competitive, But It Costs $2k To Stream Breaking Bad Over LTE Why it’s my favorite : We spent a lot of time in 2014 debunking big companies’ claims about broadband competition. This post was my favorite, because we got to look at and present plausible real-world data in a fun, accessible, and relevant way. Honorable mentions : • Here’s What Lack Of Broadband Competition Looks Like In Map Form • Do You Ever Shop Anywhere? Congratulations: Your Data Will...

For several years now, we’ve followed the proliferation of tinier and tinier Walmarts across the American retailscape. From the supermarket-sized Walmart Hometown stores to the gas station and convenience store called Walmart To Go, the retailer has experimented with store formats that are not enormous. Now the Tiny Walmart Menace has spread to Mexico, where its mini-grocery chain called Bodega Aurrera Express hopes to use low prices to draw customers. People in Mexico have this pesky habit of buying their food from street vendors, non-yuppie farmer’s markets, and small family-owned grocers. These are all places that are not Walmart, so in 2008 the company began using Aurrera, the name of a grocery chain that it had acquired, as a brand for urban markets that imitate and compete with the corner stores. The company is expanding into small-format stores for a very pragmatic reason: crowded cities and towns are where low-income people are in Mexico. The bodegas are successful, but shopp...

Shoppers who got a shiny new ultra-HD 4K TV this year may feel like they’re on top of the tech trends, but that’s so 2014. There is, of course, something new on the horizon. 2015 looks primed to be the year of curves: not just for your home-theater TV, but for your PC. That’s what LG and Samsung are betting, at least. Both companies are showing a bunch of big, wide, curved, super high-res monitors at CES in Las Vegas next week, and the internet is aflutter. Basically, the new ultra-wide curved monitors are basically a scaled-down cinema. If a wide-aspect, 50-foot curved movie screen 50 feet in front of you makes things look good in the theater, then a wide-aspect, 34-inch curved monitor three feet in front of you should make things look good at home and in the office. Both Samsung and LG are making the 34″ screens with a 21:9 aspect ratio and 3440 x 1440 resolution — that’s not quite up to 4K (3840 x 2160), but sharper than “regular” HD (1920 x 1080). What we think of as the now-st...

Does your child have one of the Play-Doh Cake Mountain playsets, and you want the weirdly phallic frosting extruder gone because you can’t stop laughing every time your kid picks it up? Good news for you: Hasbro has offered to exchange the syringe for the more boring yellow version on request in case the part offends or amuses you too much. Complaints about the part began back in November, which is when Hasbro said that it had redesigned the piece and would put a more boring version in future box sets of the toy. However, that didn’t mean that the redesigned part was ready for Christmas gifts, and a new uproar came after children unboxed their gifts and parents had a chance to give the part a second glance. After accusations that Hasbro was deleting all complaints about the part from their Facebook page, the company finally made a post of its own about the controversy, telling customers that they had heard the “feedback” and that replacements were available. “Should any consumer wa...

There has been a lot of discussion in recent years about what exactly constitutes a “family” in a time when people can have deeply felt connections with those they’ve never met while simultaneously having no meaningful relationships with their kin in the next room. But regardless of how they define familial relations, Consumerist readers have resoundingly let it be known that there were two advertising families that they wanted nothing to do with in 2014. We recently asked readers to nominate their most-hated ads from the past year, and the two ads that were most frequently cited in the nominations involved very different, but equally obnoxious, portrayals of family life. THE FAIRWEATHER FAN FAMILY The most-nominated ad this year — and one that found little love in the Consumerist Cave — was this treacly bit of nonsense from the NFL, which was presumably intended to show how families can stick together through the changes but which really highlights a group of people with no firm con...

It’s been a bad year for Comcast’s customer service image — probably not what the company wants to hear when it’s trying to convince federal regulators to let it swallow up millions of Time Warner Cable customers — and while many consumers are taking this week off from work, the folks at Kabletown know that bad service doesn’t take a holiday. The latest customer service debacle comes to us via the above YouTube clip, in which a Comcast customer tries to figure out why he’s not getting the broadband package he was promised only months earlier. See, after a few months of getting Comcast’s high-speed “Blast” service for the promotional price of around $50, the customer’s bill began to rise. When he called Comcast the other day, a rep told him that the $50 price was only good for three months and she doesn’t know where the “miscommunication” was that led him to believe that this price was intended to last a full year. But the customer wasn’t imagining things and didn’t mishear the offe...

Recently here at Consumerist, we’ve reviewed some very unsuccessful ways to open up ATMs and get at the money inside. Smashing the machine with a forklift , for example, is not a useful method. Neither is pouring acid on it . Now we have a new addition to the list: you also cannot gain access to money inside a cash machine with an explosive. The culprit in a recent attempted cash removal in Australia didn’t manage to steal any money, but he did knock himself backwards out of his sandals. This serves as yet another argument why flip-flops should never be worn outside of public showers and beaches. Fortunately, the suspect wasn’t seriously injured, but the ATM was heavily damaged. Police believe that the man captured on film is also a suspect in a similar attempted ATM explosion in a nearby city on December 24th. “In relation to sophistication it wasn’t something that was done by somebody who had expertise,” a police officer told media. Police believe that the suspect used some kind...

( Alan Rappa ) Santa is not real, and neither are his elves. If you’re old enough to be on the Internet unsupervised, you probably already knew that. However, there are real-life people who fill in for the toy-manufacturing elves, the North Pole, and the flying reindeer. One part of that supply chain is at the Amazon warehouses where our stuff resides. Working there is not fun or easy. Our semi-estranged ex-sibling site Gawker regularly puts out calls for people to talk about their jobs, and one reader who spent the holidays temping in an Amazon warehouse answered the call. You can read his surprisingly cheerful dispatches that began on December 3rd and ended yesterday over at Gawker . Here are a few quick takes on what is allegedly Amazon’s second-largest warehouse. On scheduling: “Mandatory 60 hour weeks for the next two weeks. I forget, I think you have to work a minimum number of shifts before you can even THINK about asking for a day off.” On the carrot of Amazon employment: “...

What do you get when you take a bagel, slather it in tomato sauce, pile mozzarella cheese atop it with a dash of Italian seasonings and bake the whole thing in an oven? Easy, it’s a pizza bagel. A quick look around the Internet shows that’s the consensus elsewhere too, however hard Dunkin’ Donuts might be trying to act like the aforementioned combo is not, in fact, a pizza bagel. It’s a Tomato Mozzarella Supreme Bagel, obviously, and that is all there is to it, according to Dunkin’ Donuts. The breakfast chain is offering the not-a-pizza-bagel-pizza-bagel for a limited time through early 2015 at select locations reports the Huffington Post , which also calls the menu item out for its true self (as do Thrillist , the Boston Globe and probably others because, come on). Also new to the menu are chocolate croissants, which DD seems fine with calling chocolate croissants, though a doughnut croissant is most definitely not a cronut . Fancy that. by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

( Rennett Stowe ) There are fascinating horrors hiding in letters from the Food and Drug Administration to the food, drug, and cosmetic companies that it regulates. One letter that we wish we could un-read is directed to New Yung Wah Trading Company, a Brooklyn-based company that supplies Chinese restaurants all over the East Coast. The results of multiple inspections of their warehouse near Pittsburgh were frightening to potential diners…at least, those of us who prefer our food to have as little rat urine as possible. The letter describes inspections performed in October, but wasn’t sent until December 9 and was made public this week. Here are a few items out of the letter’s catalog of horror: A box of “rib meat” (animal unnamed) that was set on top of a box of melons to thaw. The box of meat contained an “apparent active rodent nest containing multiple rodents,” which sounds very cozy for the rodents but maybe not so much for people who were planning to eat the meat. Or the melons....

( Karen Chappelle ) Anyone who’s ever had a Drunk Uncle Hal knows that a natural result of imbibing a bit too much fire water is the propensity to slur, when talking, or when singing at the top of one’s lungs about all the joys of life. We are not alone in our slippery-tongued warbling, however, as one study says birds get a bit loose beaked after a stiff drink, too. Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University say in a study published this month in PLOS ONE that a kind of songbird called the zebra finch slurs its songs when drunk. While one might imagine scientists setting up a tiny bar (and high expectations in life) for the birds and letting’em slam shots, in reality they were served a mixture of grape juice and ethanol. The result sounds much like a scene out of any late night bar where the feelings are warm and the mood is right — birds ended up singing songs with “altered” acoustics. Most likely to the tune of “Danny Boy.” “The most pronounced effects were decreased a...

( Brandon Doran ) Oh, how the mighty have fallen: The former ruler of wide swaths of parking lot as the world’s largest mall when it was built in 1976, Randall Park Mall near Cleveland, has been dead for years. But the final nail in the coffin comes this week as the building undergoes the final demolition from which no mall can return. Tumbling from its throne as the ruler of all the pavement it could see, Randall Park will soon be reduced to dust after demolition started yesterday, reports CNNMoney . The mall was touted as the largest of its kind way back when, but has gone the way of many formerly busy malls, slipping into disrepair and decline until finally shutting its doors for good in 2009. “I remember walking through it and feeling overwhelmed by the memories, most of which were good ones,” said Seph Lawless, a photographer who included the mall in his book of fallen malls, Black Friday , told CNN. “I mean, this wasn’t just a place to shop, it was a place people went to talk an...

( Molly ) For years, an increasing number of retailers have been pushing their “buy online, pickup in store” (BOPIS, for all you acronym lovers) option as a expedient option that offers the convenience of online shopping without the hassle of having to search the aisles. But is it really any faster than traditional bricks-and-mortar shopping? The folks at StellaService recently put this idea to the test at 11 of the country’s biggest retailers offering BOPIS — Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Office Depot, Sears, Staples, Target, Toys ‘R Us, and Walmart. At each location, shoppers made a BOPIS purchase and bought the same item in the traditional manner. In terms of the amount of time spent in the store, BOPIS did seem to speed things up a bit, with the average BOPIS shopper only needing 5.4 minutes to reach the cashier, compared to 7 minutes for standard shopping. Office Depot was the most expedient BOPIS retailer, with shoppers only needing 2 minutes. The fastest t...

Do you know who I feel sorry for this week? The people running social media for Hasbro’s Play-Doh brand of perpetual play clay. People keep posting to point out the resemblance of an accessory in one of their current play sets to a human phallus, and Hasbro keeps taking Here’s the whole set, which lists for $20, is currently available from Amazon for $13 , and looks pretty fun. Yet what caught the eye of some parents is that frosting extruder over to the side. It looks like a fanciful turret on a castle decorated by Dr. Seuss. Or… like a human penis with particularly artful veins. Of course, not all customers are complaining. We somehow doubt this, since this poster would need to buy two of the entire cake set. Sets including the controversial accessory could become a collectible in the future, so buying entire sets and keeping them sealed could be an investment opportunity, but it’s also possible that no one will care in the future when it’s no longer the slow news week between th...

What do you think of when you think of White Castle? If it’s “steamed meat,” you’re not alone. Thus, friends, we can get through this together: In a direct challenge to those who thought they knew a little something about White Castle, the home of the steamed meat slider has gone ahead and added veggie burgers to the menu. Not that there isn’t enough room on the menu to share — in fact, I’d like to be the first to welcome my vegetarian brethren into the warm, slightly damp embrace of a White Castle slider. Because why should meat heads have all the Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle inside jokes and Crave Case case races (you’ll have to ask my college self and her reckless friends about that one)? The sliders are made from Dr. Praeger’s brand of veggie patties, which are “chock full of lots of vegetables like carrots, zucchini, peas, spinach, broccoli, and more,” according to White Castle, reports Grub Street . They’ll be available at all White Castle locations, the company says. Ve...

( paul bica ) Since General Motors began recalling millions of vehicles for defective ignition switches earlier this year, several reports have surfaced that show the car maker and federal regulators knew of the deadly issue but failed to address it . While they almost certainly dropped the ball, a new report shows that the country’s legal system also failed to protect consumers by creating an environment in which legitimate lawsuits involving deadly crashes of affected GM vehicles fell through the cracks for nearly a decade. The New York Times reports that families who attempted to take General Motors to court after their children died in a crashes involving the company’s vehicles with defective ignition switches were either coldly rebuffed because the lives of their children weren’t worth the cost of litigation or settled their cases, barring them from discussing the issue in the future. Brush-offs by law firms and settlements with strict restrictions to not discuss the defect...

( ChrisGoldNY ) Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned consumers to avoid some caramel apples after at least 30 people in 10 states have been infected with Listeriosis due to Listeria monocytogenes. This week a third candy maker is recalling caramel apples, the government said, out of concern that its apples may be tainted with Listeria as well. The Food and Drug Administration announced today that St. Louis-based Merb’s Candies is recalling caramel apples because the company bought the fruit from a supplier that could be a source for the recent outbreak that has killed five people and sickened at least 30 others. Merb’s Candies brand Bionic Apples and Double Dipped Apples are both being recalled, after having been sold in the St. Louis area at local supermarkets, as well as through mail orders around the country. Caramel apples available from Sept. 8, 2014 through Nov. 25 are part of the recall. While the apples are no longer available for purchase...

(sfxeric) December 2014 really hasn’t been great for offsite airport parking facilities. Earlier this week, we learned about a parking lot hear the airport in Orlando that abruptly closed, stopping shuttles from running and trapping customers’ vehicles inside. A few weeks ago, we learned that Park-N-Fly payment information may have been breached. Now there are reports that another offsite lot operator, OneStopParking, may have been breached by the same gang of card-stealing baddies who were behind last year’s Target breach. OneStopParking operates discount parking lots at hotels near airports and at seaports. Security reporter Brian Krebs’ usual gang of bank sources let him know that cards used on the company’s site had also been used in fraudulent transactions . A company representative confirmed that the parking lot operator has received complaints from customers, and they are investigating the possibility of a recent or ongoing breach. Banks have found their customers’ card numbers...

( photo via The Corner by McCafe’s Facebook page ) The McDonald’s brand — with its distinctive color scheme, yellow arches, and the use of “Mc” before just about anything it offers — is one of the world’s most well-known. Even people who’ve never had a Big Mac or asked which part of the chicken a McNugget comes from are still aware of the company and its food. Given the power of that brand, you’d expect the company to slap the McDonald’s name on every new venture, but it’s curiously absent from a recently launched eatery from the company. On the other side of the globe in Sydney, Australia, you’ll now find a health food restaurant with the simple name of The Corner. It opened last week and sells things like lentils, tomato basil soup and pulled pork, along with craft sodas. But wait — what are those scribbled words in small print below “The Corner” on its logo? It says “by McCafe,” putting a meta-distance between the restaurant and its corporate ownership, as if McCafe were a subsidi...

( taberandrew ) It was only three months ago that California’s Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law banning single-use plastic bags , and already it’s facing a challenge. The law goes into full effect July 1, until which time retailers were supposed to phase out the bags, while consumers would need to bring their own multi-use bags or pay for one, or for a paper bag at the register. But supporters of plastic bags say they’ve collected enough signatures on a petition to prompt a referendum on that law, which could possibly delay its final implementation. Plastic manufacturers and supporters said they gathered more than 800,000 signatures — when they only needed 504,760 to qualify for a referendum — according to trade group American Progressive Bag Alliance, reports the San Francisco Gate . “The industry obviously is opposed to this particular piece of legislation because it seeks to ban a 100 percent recyclable product and also put fees on consumers for other bag alternatives,” said Jon Berri...

( Hammerin Man ) Nearly three months ago the Obama administration and the Department of Defense announced a proposed overhaul of the Military Lending Act that would aim to close loopholes regularly exploited by predatory lenders in order to sink their hooks into military borrowers . Now, a new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau highlights just how devastating – and costly – those loopholes can be for servicemembers. The CFPB’s report [ PDF ] found that predatory lenders have continued to target military families with high-cost loans despite protections guaranteed through the Military Lending Act. Officials with the Bureau say that the Department of Defense’s proposed changes to the rules would provide significant improvements to the protections given to military members and their families. As Consumerist has previously reported , shady lenders have been able to exploit loopholes in the current rules by creating products that are nearly indistinguishable from those ...

Have you ever been so fed up by life that you just wanted to run amok in a retail store, ripping items off shelves and pulling down displays? No? Well, you’re apparently not the youngster in this video. The above clip [ via Reddit ] (Note: NSFW language in the cameraman’s spirited play-by-play narration) features a young boy laying waste to the shelves of a dollar store. He pulls items off the shelves, throws them to the floor, without any attempt to disguise his actions or any apparent fear of being caught. When people, presumably store employees, catch on to what’s going on, they try to corner the kid, but he tries to escape through the stockroom (into which the vertical videographer follows). There’s no exit, but he is able to avoid capture. At this point, he actually begins running through the store until he once again pauses to tear down a cardboard display. Eventually he’s trapped in an aisle between two young men. “Get back!” he warns the one man in front of him, while threa...