New Cars and Handicap Toilettes: “Keeping up with the Johnses”

Truth be told, whenever I have the chance to use the handicap stall in a public bathroom I do.   It’s not because I’m handicapped or otherwise challenged but I simply enjoy the space and privacy offered in such stalls.  Every so often you’ll find one of these stalls that have a separate mirror and wash area, like the one at my place of employment.  Herein lies the conundrum.

Dirty hands

Yesterday, after washing my hands squeaky clean in the handicap stall, on my way out I got some critical looks from a guy who was washing his hands at the “normal” sink.  I could tell he was slightly disgusted that I didn’t stop and clean my hands after doing my duty.  Why did I feel I owed him an explanation? The funny thing about this was for a moment there I almost turned around and washed my hands a second time so as to not give the wrong impression.  After all it is a new job, and I don’t want to become the “stinky-hands guy”.  From now on I may just have to verbally narrate my actions as I wash my hands, to avoid any misunderstandings.

Keeping up with the Johnses

How often do we find ourselves doing and saying things we wouldn’t normally do or say because we’re worried about what someone might think?  One thing that especially comes to mind is the human inclination to constantly be comparing themselves to others.  People buy new cars, homes and boats they cannot afford just because there’s the slight possibility that on-looking eyes might view them as socio-economic or culturally inferior. 

The bottom line

People are obsessed with the “appearance” of wealth.  So much so that they do (or think) really stupid things that in retrospect are entirely illogical… kind of like how I felt I needed to wash my hands for a second time.  This reminds me of a concept presented in Dale Carnegie’s book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”.   In his book he asserts that one of the crucial needs of people is the need to feel important; that they matter. 

Perhaps people who are not able to “keep up with the Joneses” may feel (in some way) they are less important; that somehow purchasing things that others are purchasing would help them fill a sense of self that wasn’t there before.  Let me just say, who gives a rats patootie what they think?  One last thing comes to mind.

The Mercedes SLS AMG

While on lunch break at a local Chipotle, I noticed there parked in the front a Mercedes SLS AMG.  The near $200,000 dollar car was mere inches away from the opening doors of other not so valuable cars.  More interesting was the dude that was driving the car.  As he got into the car with his woman he was not so much concerned about helping her get into the  car but more so focused on everyone in the restaurant looking his way.  He seemed infatuated with the attention and appraisal people were giving him.  Do you really need to park a car, worth more than some people’s homes in the very front for everyone to see?  I suppose I’m just old fashioned, but if I were crazy enough to spend that kind of money on a car, I would park that sucker as far away from other cars as I could… and I would probably choose to drive my beat up truck to Chipotle instead.  But that’s just me…

Office Pranks: Unlocked Computers

“My screen is frozen!” said a co-worker.  Despite abusing his mouse and smacking the PC tower the screen maintained its frozen status.  How frustrating that must be to see your Outlook email in the background and all of your windows consolidated on the bottom yet unable to open them or move your cursor.

What this guy didn’t realize was that someone had taken a screen shot of his screen by holding the control button and pressing the “print screen” button on the keyboard.  This copies your screen as it shows on your monitor and with some saving skills and then posting as wallpaper it can render the appearance of a frozen screen.

It’s really quite a genius prank and can elicit high levels of blood pressure and frustration.  It also can elicit secret laughter and concealed snickering by those administering the prank.

Leaving Your Computer Unlocked

The window of opportunity for pranks increase exponentially when one leaves their computer unlocked and vulnerable to other co-workers.

Another common office prank is to rush over to the unlocked computer and send a mass email out to either the company or team from which the victim is a part.

Some examples of the types of emails that are sent out are messages like ” Tomorrow I will buy lunch for everyone! What kind should I order?” or something generic like “I left my computer unlocked”.

Honestly I have had many opportunities to execute such a prank and it takes a lot of self control to not put something madly embarrassing like “Pee wee Herman is my hero” or “I love boogers”.  Perhaps part of what keeps me from doing it is knowing that most people would suspect me anyways and my ability to keep the zygomaticus (smiling) muscles from contracting is severely limited.

So don’t become a victim, remember to lock your computers when you go away from your desk!

Office Pranks: URMOM

While I was commencing my education in the financial services industry, there were several people in my training class who were anxious to find good stocks and investments to analyze.  So one day, I saw a perfect opportunity with a good friend and co-worker who sat next to me.

We were on a break between lectures when I saw my friend looking up some ticker symbols.  I told him about a stock that was AMAZING, had a lot of upside potential, and was sure to make him a lot of money.  Eager to receive the information, I told him to look up the following ticker, “Alright I’ll spell it, ready?” My friend, “yeah, go ahead!”, I then just spelled URMOM.

Looking at his face contort with confusion, he was baffled why it wasn’t coming up.  No charts, no information to analyze, surely he had done something wrong.  Then I started to laugh, and it was then and only then that he realized what he had spelled~ URMOM.  Muahahahahahaha!

When Pranks Go Wrong

Have there ever been times where pranks have not gone so well or when pranks have gone completely wrong? 

YES!!!  There are 2 things that can happen when pranks go wrong:

1-  Either the unexpected reaction makes the prank funnier    OR

2-  it produces a very undesirable result  (ie. not funny)

On the fly here I can think of 3 personal experiences that come to mind as I think about pranks gone wrong.

Shaving cream and feather

I’ll never forget the time in high school when a few of my friends and my cousin who was in town had a sleep over.  If you know anything about sleep overs with friends (especially prank-prone friends) you never should be the one to fall asleep first.

So there he was~ my cousin, ever so peacefully resting in the land of horizontal slumber.  We had seen the prank administered before but with shaving cream.  Yes the shaving cream and feather prank! Yet in this case we had to modify it slightly (no shaving cream) to a “toothpaste and feather prank”.  We filled his hand full of toothpaste then ever so lightly tickled his nose and… wallla!  Cousin with toothpaste face.

Rather than applying the toothpaste to the tickled area, he  smeared it into his eyes and all over his forehead.  Note to self:  ”Apparently” it hurts when you get toothpaste in your eyes.  I really felt like a Jerk-face that day.  Sorry Garrett 

Spider fuzz

When you’re  young sometimes church isn’t the most exciting place to be at 9 in the morning.  So my brother and I found a way to prank others while sitting in church pews.  We would pluck from our fuzzy black socks little fuzzballs and blow them airborne to watch them land on peoples heads in front of us.  Often our parents would look our way and wonder what in the world we were smiling about.

Then there was that day when a sweet old lady mistook the fuzzball for a slowly descending spider.  She exclaimed, “Ahhh!  A spider!!! A spider!!!”.

Catfish fight

On a summer day at the beach my brother and our friends discovered some small dead catfish laying in the sand.  Let’s see, dead catfish~ bored kids…  why don’t we have a catfish fight?

Only somehow we forgot that catfish have very sharp fins.  Hmmm…  As our friends were tossing catfish I remember the  exchange came to an abrupt halt and ended with tears.   Yep, one of the catfish ended up sticking into the leg of my brother’s friend.  He had this dead catfish hanging from his thigh and for some reason he didn’t think it was so funny…

I’m not going to mention the time I rolled my neighbor’s house and got caught and had to apologize and clean it up…  I know there’s tons more out there which might deserve a second post but please do share if you have any to humor us with 

Car Slumber Party

A little six years ago my grandparents nearly slept themselves to death going southbound on I-15.  As they were on their way to California to visit family, somewhere outside of Vegas my Grandmother wanted to take a little nap, so she let her dear husband take the wheel.

Maybe it was the drone of the tires as they hit the hot pavement, the monotonous desert scenery, the sight of Grandma’s head bobbing from side to side as she drifted in and out of consciousness, or perhaps just the mere result of being old and missing an afternoon siesta.  Whatever it was…  it forced Grandpa’s eyelids shut.

So now they were in a very precarious situation.  No one was driving…

Behind them cars were attempting to pass but never quite mustering up the courage because of Grandpa’s unpredictable swerving~ they were backed up for miles and had slowed down considerably!

Imagining in my mind the scenario with both of them knocked out it’s both hilarious and terrifying.  Hilarious because it seemed like something straight out of a national lampoon’s movie and terrifying because two very wonderful people were so close to ending their mortality.

Finally the car ended up driving onto the median popping all 4 tires at which point they woke up.  It really was a miracle they came out of it unscathed!  Had there been a different outcome perhaps I wouldn’t be as inclined to joke about it…

So there you go, if you must have a slumber party, try to keep it off wheels will ya?!  ;)

Cart Rage: An epidemic coming to a store near you!

Just the other day I was at Costco enjoying a tasty piece of pizza. As I was sitting there facing the exit, a rather lengthy line started to build up of people waiting for the grocery warden to check their respective receipts. 

Everyone knows the drill

Having a background in Psychology, situations like these make it difficult not to observe and analyze the reactions of people.   

The line was about six or seven carts deep with mostly full carts; however the person in the back I noticed only had a couple of items.  Going by the vascular dilation of his facial arteries and varying hues of pulsating red it seemed like he was painfully aware of this fact… that somehow, because of his limited cargo he was entitled to a shorter wait time.

Cart rage

At our Costco smiley faces are always drawn on the receipts of customers who bring their kids.  I’m just guessing that somewhere in their training program employee’s watch a video or something that tells them they have to do it no matter how long the line gets.  This occasion was no exception to the smiley face rule.  What happened next was a good example of a growing epidemic, “Cart Rage”.

All of a sudden he exploded out of the line like a bullet leaving the barrel of a gun, in a mad dash toward the exit.  He almost escaped before the receipt warden called his way, “Sir, I need to see your receipt please”.  To which he reluctantly showed and snatched back after the mark was made.  He was visibly upset that he had to wait for such nonsense.

The blinker

Beware of cart rage!  Often people with similar temperaments are easy to upset when going in and out of grocery aisles. Because carts do not come equipped with blinkers and we are not (currently) obligated to use hand signals, it does make it tough to let people know where you are going.  One time I was turning around an aisle and just so happened to pull in front of a lady who apparently had a cart rage predisposition.  By the look on her face you would’ve thought I talked about her mom in a derogatory fashion or that she smelled something foul and offensive. 

Solutions

I would not be opposed to a complete revamp of grocery cart technology.  Blinkers, break lights, emergency flashers, the backup beep, or even a bicycle horn would be a great improvement.  Creating such a cart might eliminate or at least dramatically reduce the tragedy that cart rage has caused in our community.

Production of these carts would be a great way to stimulate the economy and give much needed jobs to those who are on the tail end of unemployment benefits.  Other possible solutions to reduce cart rage could be a more strict enforcement of the 20 items or less checkout rule, smarter self service machines, realistic staffing: employee to customer ratio, vanilla bean plug-ins, and proper cart maintenance when carts veer to one side, shake, or otherwise malfunction.  

I realize these are all short-term fixes and what needs to happen before cart-reform is self-reform.  People with cart rage need to get the help they need before it consumes their lives.  Life can get frustrating I know and for those who lack coping skills the last thing that they need to do is get behind a cart in the wrong frame of mind.  Let us work together on providing a way out of what has become an epidemic in our shopping stores.

Funerals and Weddings: Places You’re Dying to Go?

The last thing I remember before seeing stars and losing consciousness was having an argument about not wanting to go.  I don’t really know where I didn’t want to go, but I do remember the thought of going made me want to crawl in a hole or regurgitate something not meant for my intestinal tract.  As I started to awaken from being out, I recall smelling flowers. 

Dizzy and Disoriented

By now I realized that I had been forced to go wherever it was I didn’t want to go… Still disoriented and void of energy, I started to rely on my senses to give me an idea of where I had been adult-knapped to.  Why was I so opposed to coming here? I mean it seems nice; smells like flowers, nice music, and what the?!  Whoever dressed me did not match my belt with my shoes. Perfect.

Sitting in the back of what looked to be a church, I could see the tail end of a line that extended all the way to the front where a pastor was standing.  I shuddered to think I could be at a funeral.  I mean clergy are often found at such places right?  ((sniff, sniff)) and flowers…((sniff))… good eats, perhaps hors d’oeuvres?  Alright, I admit now I’m starting to salivate.  If anything can motivate me to get up and check things out that’s it.

The moment of truth

I stumble to my feet to discover the line of people were not in fact getting their last glimpse of a dead person but rather to greet the bride and groom!  Now I remember why I didn’t want to come.

Weddings are special and all but honestly, it’s hard to get excited about a wedding of people you barely know.  They were our neighbors and they did bring by those cookies that one time.

The more I think about it, weddings really can be a lot like funerals.  At a wedding reception you say goodbye to the bride and groom just like you would to a passed loved one, because you know you’re not going to be seeing them for a while. How many of us lose friends to a marriage?  Something happens to them; almost as bizarre as an alien abduction.

Believe it or not, mourning does happen at weddings too!  I know, shocker!  I’ve witnessed this first hand.  How often are there people, even if only a few, that just don’t agree the bride or the groom is meant for each other?; That somehow one of them was making a wrong choice.

Conversely, I’ve been to funerals before where people were as smiley as I’ve ever seen them.  Some I’m sure were beneficiaries of the deceased, while others genuinely happy.  Happy to see people they haven’t seen in a long time, happy to know whoever was taking the proverbial “dirt nap”, was not suffering anymore.

Of course you have the obligatory speeches honoring the dead and the living, people carrying heavy stuff (pallbearers and the groom), a specially prepared car, organs (musical or appendages), music, flowers, pictures, and then there’s the stuff that makes all the waiting worth it.

Food

At least some of you were thinking booze, but not in my family.  Consuming delicious food occupies the thoughts of many of the attendees- almost to the point of olfactory overload.  Whether funeral potatoes or finger foods to die for, both ceremonies warrant the best cuisine money can afford. 

I know I haven’t exhausted all of the similarities between the two but for me, the BIGGEST one is that I simply LOATHE going to them. It would be more enjoyable to jump in a barrel of skunks, scrub toilets, watch C-SPAN, or maybe listen to a Celine Dion album on repeat.  Am I not the only one?!