No joke. This actually happened.
By some measures, the stakes could not be lower. A red envelope that went missing — or was stolen — from the [Amagansett elementary] school's mailroom [in December of 2023] was said to contain a $25 Amazon gift card, a Christmas-season expression of gratitude from a parent to one of the school's occupational therapists.
Yet the missing card has prompted a police report, accusations of foul play and bullying and a disciplinary trial that has generated some 1,400 pages in testimony from more than a dozen witnesses. Passages read like an Agatha Christie mystery, except there is no antique revolver or pearl-handled dagger.
That response alone would be absurd enough, rolling out the court system for a gift card in the amount of a couple of new iPhone chargers off Amazon.
But the sheer price tag of the endeavor is even more jaw-dropping:
Meanwhile, based on his published rates, the fees for the arbitrator overseeing the hearing have already exceeded $24,800 — or nearly a thousand-times the value of the missing card — and are sure to rise further.
Walking in and seeing the small New York town of Amagansett (pop 651) spending $24,800 on a gift card dispute:
The dispute began when a school parent gave one gift card to the school's receptionist and one to its therapist. The card subsequently vanished — and school principal Maria Door was seen on security footage "emerg[ing] from the mailroom" apparently with the card in her hand:
In her own telling, Dorr found a red envelope in her mailbox that morning and opened it the next day to find a $50 gift card from the local Shell gas station. A family had given her a similar card a few months earlier and she assumed it was from them, Dorr said.
When she later heard that a card was missing from the office, she apparently figured it was a different card and not the one she evidently took by mistake.
The receptionist was reportedly "spreading rumors" about the alleged theft, leading Dorr to eventually contact the system superintendent, who apparently didn't buy her story of innocence.
The superintendent was soon pressuring her to resign. Yet there are allegations of conspiracy at play: Dorr's lawyer claims that the missing gift card may have been "a setup to torpedo Dorr's candidacy for superintendent."
(The fellow who eventually won the superintendent seat reportedly got himself involved in the investigation, so that's not a crazy theory.)
The conclusion seems nowhere in sight, putting everyone in town on tenterhooks:
The arbitrator indicated a decision was likely by mid-February. Yet Valentine's Day came and went without a report, leaving Amagansettians on edge.
'A lot does ride on this [expletive] $25 gift card,' one parent said. 'It's definitely going to throw a huge wrench in [expletive] — no matter which way it goes.'
These small, rich northern towns — I tell ya!
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