The first stirrings of dissent came from the UPS drivers. In May, they began posting on Brown Café, an anonymous message board, about the thirty-three-hundred-page catalogue bundles sent out by the furniture company Restoration Hardware. “My building for the last few days is slammed with RH catalogues (
17 pounds each) with another trailer full coming in next week,” one wrote. “We’ve been running helpers to try to keep up. I can’t believe we’re the only ones getting pounded with these.” Shift workers who unloaded the pallets complained of back strain. One driver described orders to give the catalogues to passersby, if necessary, rather than return them to UPS distribution centers. “Was loaded down with those darn mags again today,” another wrote. “I see them all over my route in the recycle bins.”
Then, customers rebelled. In Palo Alto, seven volunteers returned two thousand pounds of the catalogues to a Restoration Hardware store in one day, on hand trucks. Erin Gates, an interior designer in Boston, rallied her blog readers to remove their names from the mailing list, explaining that the catalogues are useless, because they don’t contain product dimensions. Some who received the books have proposed alternate uses: dog toy, home-fitness equipment. Melanie Johnson, an origami artist in California, is rolling the pages into paper-bead jewelry. A UPS driver suggested the catalogue would make a handy wheel chock in an emergency.