Sideswipe: May 17: Can you guess the decade?

Brand-extension failure

Evian released a "water bra" in 2005, apparently because they thought their association with bottled water could persuade women to buy water-filled bras. The idea was that water-filled bras would be cooling. As far as I can tell, the product was discontinued soon after being introduced.

New word alert

Do you have a wooden sign hanging in your home that features a little stick figure falling over with a giant glass of wine under the words it's "Five o'clock somewhere"? You just might be "cheugy", a term that's gone viral on TikTok and is slowly seeping its way into Gen Z vernacular—often as a jab against members of older generations. Cheugy (Chew GEE) is meant to describe something that's out of date, or someone trying too hard — wooden home decor signs that talk about wine or coffee are cheugy. Anything related to "Friends" is major cheug. Other hashtags to avoid if you don't want to be labelled a cheug, according to the Instagram account @cheuglife, are "I did a thing" after dying or cutting your hair, "views" for mountain photos and "life's a beach".

Stuff-ups at work

1. "I was hurrying to leave at the end of the day. I put on my jacket in a hurry. Pushed my hand through the sleeve and accidentally punched my boss's mother in the face. She was visiting the office. That was a bad day."
2. "Sent email to colleague explaining how bad external person was at replying to emails, cc'd external person in. Went to their place of work to explain, apologise but also make case for why email was sent. Left proud, looked down, entire shirt open, entire meeting in my bra."
3. "I wrote some packaging copy that described the product as having a 'sweat taste'. Didn't spot the typo until it was on shelves."
4. "A harmless one I did once was calling IT because my computer was making a screeching noise and wouldn't stop. They couldn't figure out the issue and drove 30km to come and look at it. My handbag was resting on the Esc key."

'Not closing down' of Whanganui

"Two businesses side by side in Whanganui," writes Hamish. "One is closing, the other is not as you can see from the sign."