When QR Codes Go Bad...

Heinz, the undisputed worldwide leader in ketchup, known for its 57 varieties, added a 58th that apparently did not go over very well across the Atlantic Ocean.

The problem started when a German Heinz customer, Daniel Korell, scanned a QR code from a bottle in order to design his own personalized ketchup label. There was only one problem—the Heinz promotion itself had expired in 2014, along with the website domain that the QR code directed users to visit. The customer did not bother to read the fine print. After all, who reads the fine print, especially on a ketchup bottle?

As it turns out, the domain had been reassigned because Heinz did not bother to maintain it. Thus, the QR code unwittingly became repurposed, leading customers to a page called FunDorado. No, it’s not an El Dorado tribute page...it’s a German porn site.

So instead of a chance to create his own label, Korell was confronted with live Webcam girls in various degrees of presentation. Korell took to his Facebook page to share the indignation, along with a few photos.

Heinz, by now sporting a shade of red that complements their bottles, offered an apology and a free bottle of ketchup. Yep, they’ll even allow him to custom design the label.

It was only fitting that FunDorado also came to Korell’s rescue, offering the flustered German a year’s free subscription to the porn site.

As of press time, it was unknown whether Korell accepted the ketchup bottle, the free subscription...or both.

TOSSING BACK, FIRST CLASS: Perhaps a Missouri mail carrier should have suggested that his union negotiate the right to toss back a beer or six in its latest contract talks with the U.S. Postal Service. David Thompson went rogue and did it, anyway, and now the letter carrier is a former USPS employee who also faces some hard time in the pokey for his deeds.

Thompson, 54, pleaded guilty to a federal charge of stealing mail, according to the Kansas City Star. Thompson didn’t steal the mail per se, but perhaps there wasn’t room in his mailbag for both the mail and the five to eight beers he was consuming daily. An investigation revealed Thompson was keeping the beer in his bags and throwing the mail away in a trash container behind a local Elks Lodge.

USPS officials used a hidden camera in the vehicle driven by Thompson—who’d been suspected of boozing on the job—to uncover the truth regarding the alcohol and discarded mail. Thompson, who joined the USPS in 1990, tossed an estimated 20,000 pieces of mail between May 2012 and January 2014. He now faces up to five years in prison.

SPEAKING OF MR. ZIP: Two postal employees seem destined for federal prison after they confessed to stealing narcotics from packages at an O’Hare International Airport mail center, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Aramis Brown and Zaphronsia Wheeler of Chicago—employees in the airport’s International Service Center—stole from at least 16 packages during seven thefts. They were arrested and confessed to the crimes.

Wheeler admitted to authorities that he would purposely mis-sort packages and Brown would then open them up and remove the contents, which included marijuana. Both men were charged with mail theft and narcotics offenses and released on $4,500 bonds. They face a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, if convicted.

Wheeler admitted to making $13,000 from selling narcotics that he and Brown had stolen from the mail. Brown confessed that he had been rooting through the mail—opening packages he suspected contained drugs based on smell and the package’s address—since earlier this year. PI