I’d say “don’t try this at home” but it’s probably harmless (unless you’re skipping work)… well, for you, at least. I have no idea what it’ll do to your phone. — Dan

The Snack Chip Trick That May Get You Fired

Pictured above is a party-sized bag of Twisties, a snack you’ve probably never heard of unless you are from Australia or the surrounding region. Twisties are curly chips made primarily of ground corn and rice, and come in two standard flavors — cheese, as seen above, and chicken. They were first introduced in Australia in 1950 and have maintained popularity there, but haven’t found a following elsewhere (but you can apparently get them on Amazon, where the picture above is from), making them a regional snack

And if you use them incorrectly, you may get fired. Just ask Tom Colella.

In 2016, Colella was completing his 20th year as an electrician for a company out of Perth, Australia’s fourth most populous city. Being an electrical, he was almost always out in the field working on job sites — that is, he didn’t work at a desk in his office. In theory, Colella and anyone else in a similar role could just pretend to do work, but in practice, his employer had a way to control for that. As the Los Angeles Times explained, “like other employees at his company, Colella had a personal digital assistant [PDA] that tracked his assigned and completed job tasks and also had a GPS that monitored his location.”

In most cases, that fact alone would prevent an employee from playing hooky — if your boss knows that you’re not where you are assigned to be, they’re likely going to fire you. Someone tipped off Colella’s employer about his golf habit — he had, apparently, skipped work 140 times over the two years prior, hitting the links instead of doing his job. His employer checked the GPS records, and no visits to golf courses were found. But there were many times when, for reasons unclear, the GPS data was missing entirely. So they fired Colella.

Under local law, some terminated employees have the right to appeal such decisions to the government’s Fair Work Commission, and Colella was a covered employee. So he brought his complaint to the Commission, arguing that he did nothing wrong — per the Los Angeles Times, he “claimed the PDA had a glitch,” and that wasn’t his fault. But during the inquiry, a new fact came to light: Colella really liked Twisties. He was almost always carrying a bag with him, and he had a weird habit — he kept his work-issued PDA in his bag of chips. And this wasn’t a secret — as Ars Technica reports, the Fair Work Commissioner assigned to Colella’s case noted that “Mr. Colella’s supervisors knew that he placed his PDA in the [chip bag]” on a regular basis. And that should have raised a red flag for them — not just because it’s weird to store your electronics in a bag of chips, but because a company that hires electricians should understand the science behind such an action.

As anyone who has ever opened a bag of chips knows, the bags are typically lined with aluminum foil. And in this case, the bag was acting as a Faraday cage — an enclosure capable of blocking electromagnetic fields — and one strong enough to keep the relatively weak GPS signals from hitting the PDA. That — not some strange desire to grime up his PDA — was likely Colella’s goal in bagging his device. As NPR reported, the Fair Work Commissioner noted that “as an experienced electrician, Mr Colella knew that this bag would work as a [Faraday] cage, thereby preventing the PDA from working properly — especially the provision of regular GPS coordinate updates,”

Colella’s termination was upheld, and reportedly, he found work as an Uber driver — a job where if your GPS isn’t enabled, you’re not getting paid. It’s unclear if he’s still eating Twisties, but he probably has more flexibility if he wants to play more golf.

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🛰More About GPS 🌐

Today’s Bonus fact: Had Colella waited a year, he may have had another defense — continental drift. Continents move slightly over time, and GPS maps are static. That’s a problem if you want accurate maps, so on January 1, 2017, as the World Economic Forum notes, Australia shifted all of its GPS coordinates to account for continental drift. But that fact probably wouldn’t have helped Colella all that much; the shift was only 1.8 meters.

From the Archives: The Problem with Chinese GPS: It’s just different.

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And thanks! — Dan