Ryan Wastes Your Time

Supersonic

2009-05-04T13:48:00.000-07:00

The song Supersonic is by JJ Fad not Salt N Peppa.

Yesterday I worked at Sonic as a carhop. I was doing it as a favor to my close friend Megan and she was doing it as a fundraiser for the society I work for. See how it all ties together?

Sonic allows charities to come and work as carhops and keep the tips. It benefits Sonic because they don’t have to pay employees and it benefits charities because people tip big when they know it’s for charity.

I am a lousy Sonic carhop. I don’t wear skates, I don’t know how to hold the tray and I cannot decode the receipt so I can’t tell you what you ordered and if what I am giving you matches it.

Things I learned about Sonic yesterday:

1) A ton of people work inside the building. I always pictured like one cook and an order taker/carhop. Nope! There are like 15 people in that kitchen.
2) If you park as close to the menu as possible, it makes it impossible for the carhop to reach your window.
3) It’s a talent to be able to hold the tray with one hand and hand the items to the customer with the other. I never mastered it (or even tried) and I spent my time holding the tray up to the window and asking them to take the stuff off of it. You can tell the Sonic regulars because they had no idea how to react to it.
4) If I don’t know what they ordered it’s pretty fun to guess. I had one order that was one large drink and 3 small brightly colored slushies. I walked up to the car and said “ok I see you have a large one of these and 2 green ones and a blue one, that will be $2.86 please”
5) Happy hour at Sonic is a really good deal! Unless you are going to get guilted by a charity out of an extra dollar or two anyway.
6) It is a non-stop assembly line inside that building and the people that work there certainly earn their money. There is no down time and no sitting around. It’s a good thing because I don’t know where they would fit 15 chairs anyway.
7) No matter what a person orders, it has to be taken out to their car on a red tray. I took a water out to a car on a tray.
8) I love Sonic, but I don’t love working there.

Dreamsicles

2009-04-10T08:52:00.000-07:00

For countless hours your child sits in front of the TV watching Dora the Explorer train her to find Dora products in various hidden places. “Can you find the backpack?” she says as your child proudly points it out on the screen.

Yesterday I went to the freezer section of my local grocer to get some yummy Dreamsicles. Unfortunately, I was blocked by a 3 year old girl who had her nose pressed up against the freezer door looking at some kind of Dora branded frozen treat. She was not moving until her biological mom acknowledged that she found the Dora pops.

The little girl’s biological mother noticed the girl was in my way and quickly instructed her to move. The little girl reluctantly complied.

I wasn’t at all mad or anything, but the biological mom seemed very apologetic. I wanted to explain to her that the only reason her kid was blocking my way is because her real mom, Dora, has spent the last year training her to seek out Dora products whenever possible.

If there was a cartoon where a frozen pie crust spend half an hour telling you find it and fill it with blueberries, that same kid would have been 7 freezer doors down and I wouldn’t have had this little story to share.

Bored Teens Not Getting Laid

2009-03-06T15:16:00.000-08:00

At age 16 some friends and I had the idea that we would go to the grocery store and drive around the parking lot and surrounding areas with a bag of groceries on top of the car.

We used a paper bag and put a brick in the bottom to keep it in place and then taped some various grocery products in it so they stuck out the top.

As we drove around people were honking, waving, flashing their lights and signaling for us to roll down our windows so they could tell us. It actually worked so well that I felt kind of bad about it. Everyone was just trying to be nice to us.

As an adult I think back and wonder why the fuck NONE of those people suspected something was up when they saw it was 4 teenagers in the car laughing their asses off and just driving around in circles. But I think that’s the glory of doing dumb shit without thinking too much about it, it makes for great memories. Thinking it through would have probably led us into just scratching the idea altogether and staying home playing Sega Genesis for another night.

One thing I wish we had thought through was when we dialed a number at random, pretended to be drunk and said “hey it’s me, I am drunk and stuck down at the 7-11”. I never would have thought the lady would have freaked out so much. Who would have thought that that was a call she might believe was real. OK you know what, I don’t regret that one. That was funny shit. She tried so hard to get us to tell her which 7-11 so she could come get whoever she thought she was talking to.

Ben had this great bit he did on prank calls where he would fish the information out of the receiver of the call. He would start by saying “hey it’s me” and eventually he would know the name of the person they thought they were talking to. It was hilarious stuff. Then people got caller ID and our lives ended.

I have a dentist appointment at 4:20

2009-03-04T16:03:00.000-08:00

Do you ever go to a restaurant knowing full well that you plan on ordering the cheese sticks, but you wait until waiter says “can I start you off with an appetizer?” and you say “oh you know I think that’s a good idea” and act like you hadn’t been planning it for the past hour. You don’t want to seem like the person that went into a restaurant with a game plan or anything.

Yesterday at the dentist they asked me if I wanted gas. “Um, well I guess so, that would probably help” I said. Then a few seconds later I pulled my Zune out of my pocket, selected my “getting high at the dentist” playlist and checked out for about 45 minutes.

I don’t want to be known as the patient that shows up ready to get high, but I totally am the patient that shows up ready to get high.

Dumb Crap We Did

2009-02-26T15:25:00.000-08:00

I grew up in a house with a pool. When you have a pool for 15 years, you see a lot of pool toys come and go. Most are brought by guests that assume you have nothing fun for them to play with and a few have just been around since you can remember.

One summer we had this set of rings that were designed to swim through. The idea was you would create an underwater course and then swim your way through it. There were 4 rings about the size of hula hoops and for safety each ring broke apart in 4 places. I guess if some super fat kid got stuck in one like a bird in a plastic 6-pack ring, he could break free. The rings floated and to suspend them underwater they came with little milk jugs that you fill with rocks. (we always got our rocks from the Sheppard Elementary Playground) They also came with yellow ropes to tie the rings to the milk jugs.

As we tried to swim the ring course we noticed that our biggest problem was our own buoyancy. So there we are, bored kids, cursing our inability to sink at will and in possession of 4 milk jugs filled with rocks and yellow ropes.

The new game was tie a milk jug full of rocks to your ankle, sink yourself to the bottom and then try to get back to the surface. It was actually fun as stupid as it was and considering we had no safety plan we are all lucky to be alive.

I guess we thought the toy as it was designed lacked a few things. It wasn’t dangerous or risky to try to swim through the rings and there was no punishment for failure. We fixed both problems and made a game of it.

Pffffffft

2009-02-18T15:17:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I let out a very long silent fart at my desk. It was probably 2.5 seconds long. If it were a ghost it would have been about the size of Casper. If balloons had feelings I would dedicate my life to untying them all so they could feel the satisfaction I felt after this release.

Before Casper even had a chance to introduce himself a coworker came barging into my office and without stopping came around my desk to stand next to me. She was trying to get everyone to sign a birthday card and was hurrying around to everyone to get it done and in the mail. She told me it’s my turn to sign the card and then fumbled it and it landed between our feet.

“I got it!” I hurried down there to get it. She was already standing in my fog no need to make it worse.

I quickly signed it and she was on her way. I have no idea if she knows what had happened.

Worst Gameshow Ever!

2009-02-14T14:16:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was at a very nice hotel for a work related event. Since we spend the morning doing manual labor and then have to look nice during lunch, I wear play clothes until it’s time to look nice then change into my church clothes. A good plan until…

I went into the bathroom to change clothes. The bathroom was very swanky, from the dividers between the urinals to the heavy wooden doors on the stalls.

The problem with this swanky hotel bathroom was that it smelled like someone shat an omelet made of rotten eggs and sulphur and that someone was still in the bathroom washing his hands at the sink.

I needed to find a stall to change clothes in and there wasn’t much else I could be doing to buy time so I went straight to them. The stalls were arranged nicely with 3 on each side of a short hallway like dressing rooms.

I found myself in a very twisted version of Deal or No Deal. I had to choose 1 stall to enter, but one of them still needed a visit from the Hazmat unit. So even though I had a 5 out of 6 chance of getting a good one, Howie Mandel the omelet chef was STILL at the sink. I guess his shit takes after him, just lingering around.

I tried to use logic to choose a stall, but I couldn’t find any. I tried to guess which stall he would use based on what I would use and then I chose a different one.

I chose wrong.

The heavy wooden door was acting like a Ziploc bag and when I stepped in a green gas overtook me and I swear I heard a fog horn. It was like I had opened the cursed tomb of an ancient sewage worker.

For a split second I wondered if it would be rude to immediate evacuate a stall he had just been in, but a) I couldn’t stay another second and b) he would think I was crazy if I did stay in the tomb of King Takencrapen. I bolted across to another stall as fast as I could.

I wonder if he blogged about this experience from his perspective.

Semper Finding everything ok?

2009-02-05T13:27:00.000-08:00

I worked at a computer store at the height of the PC buying boom. About twice an hour someone would walk in and say “I am computer illiterate” then they would laugh and expect us to do the same. They were completely unaware that we had heard that 10 times since lunch.

I worked with a guy named Paul. He was a Marine and despite working at a computer store he was still mentally a Marine. He hated customers and really hated when they were so helpless. One day after hearing the famous illiterate line one too many times he kind of snapped. From that day forward he would pretend, not only that he had not heard it before, but he would act like he had no idea what they meant by it. They would spend minutes explaining that they just mean they don’t know much about computers. “Ohhhhhh I see” he would say as if he just finally got on board with it. Then one day he took it a step further. “You can’t spell computer?” he said to some guy holding a stack of competitor coupons. “Are you getting smart with me?” they guy asked and Paul being Paul said “I am a smart guy yeah”. Minutes later our manager was apologizing to the customer and offering him discounts.

As employees we had to come in the same door as customers so we all hated when customers would wait out there for us to open. It was awkward for someone to let in the employee and then lock the door on the customer still standing outside. And no we wouldn’t just let them in early. One day a customer was waiting outside, It was maybe 5 minutes until we opened and Paul walked up from the parking lot and says “we aren’t going to let you in early”. As he is saying it the cleaning lady unlocks the door to let him in and as the door is closing the guy says “what did you say to me?”. Paul shouts “you heard me!” and tries to go back out to get in his face, but the cleaning lady blocked him and locked the door. A few of us ran over and kept him from going back outside. I went into the office and warned the manager on duty that the first customer in the door is going to want to talk to him.

It was always fun to stand within an ear shot of Paul helping a customer. You never knew when a fight could break out.

Denny's

2009-02-03T15:33:00.000-08:00

Americans lined up en mass today to get a free breakfast at Denny’s. Unlike your birthday when Denny’s will give you a free breakfast, this free breakfast was open to everyone regardless of if you were born!

1) Did everyone that waited in line today also go to Denny’s and get a free breakfast on their birthday?
2) How many people ordered water, no additional food and gave no tip?
3) Would they have gone if it was a $4 off coupon?
4) Do they know there is a place that always gives away free food? It’s called a soup kitchen. I am sure it’s like a Denny’s. I have never been to one because of all the shady characters and bums that hang out there and I haven’t been to a soup kitchen either.

A store could have a 10% off sale and have limited response, that same store would be packed on tax-free weekend. If a guy offered you 4 dollars to go hold his place in line at Denny’s, would you? Is that all your time is worth?

Now the only exception to this is a large family that is on a limited income. Hell yeah take the whole family down to Denny’s and feed those little crumb snatchers!

Bud Bowl III

2009-01-30T06:36:00.000-08:00

Previews of Super Bowl commercials

Super Bowl commercials

Recaps of Super Bowl commercials

I like the Super Bowl for the football game they play between the commercials. It would be cool if they could split it into two channels, one for the commercials and one for the game. That way losers like me could watch the dumb old football game while the rest of the world enjoyed the hilarious razor-sharp wit of beer and car commercials.

Do You Smell That?

2009-01-30T06:27:00.000-08:00

carbon monoxide

–noun
a colorless, odorless, poisonous gas, CO, that burns with a pale-blue flame, produced when carbon burns with insufficient air: used chiefly in organic synthesis, metallurgy, and in the preparation of metal carbonyls, as nickel carbonyl.

“Everyone – we’re being told at this point – should be ok, but the smell of carbon monoxide was still thick in the air even when our news crews arrived this morning. Officials haven’t been able to put an exact cause on the leak, but just say it was a faulty space heater. Again the smell of the poisonous gas was thick, they believe that everyone will be alright…..” - Robbie Owens, CBS 11 News

Robbie,
You are just making this shit up aren’t you? You could smell an odorless gas from a block away? A faulty space heater isn’t an exact cause?
Nice Work!

Phenomenoying

2009-01-29T11:43:00.000-08:00

Phenomenoying

It’s the combination of something inexplicable and annoying.

Phenomenoying is different than regular annoying:

It’s annoying that people go through life like zombies with cell phones plastered to their ears, but it’s not phenomenoying because it’s explainable. They care more about themselves and their “business” to show even the most basic courtesy to those around them. Annoying yes, but not phenomenoying.

On the northbound service road for 75 at Campbell road there are 4 lanes not including the U-turn only lane. The 4 lanes are laid out simply; the left lane is a left turn only lane. The middle-left lane is a left turn OR straight lane. The right-middle lane is straight only and the right lane is straight or turn right. Nothing about this layout is unusual. Every morning the left-middle lane has at least 500% more cars in it than any other lane. The reason it’s annoying is because it builds a nice little wall keeping me from the U-turn lane which is what I need each morning. The reason it’s phenomenoying is because EVERYONE in that lane is either turning left or going straight. Yet they are lined up 20 cars deep in the option lane while the left only and the straight only lanes sit nearly empty! Are the waiting to decide last minute? Why don’t they get in the shorter lanes?

I know what you are thinking (if you are thinking about it) Maybe that lane allows drivers easier access to the ramp to get on 75 after the light. No! it doesn’t. And since when do drivers thinks ahead. These are the same people that do not changelanes when they see a lane closed sign.

Another example of phenomenoying is when my cell phone will start using my call ringtone to let me know I have texts.