half-priced holidays

My friend Randy has been dating a girl for the past three years. He’s broken up with her a few times in the past to ‘test the waters’ when a more attractive fish has swum by, but he always returns to the same old pond when those more attractive fish don’t take his bait.

He stopped by the other night, fresh from his last minute Christmas shopping spree at the local mall, and started pulling out the gifts that he planned on giving his girlfriend.

“Check this out,” he said, “I got her this little bracelet…what do you think?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “It’s sure got a lot of little hearts on it. Is it gold?”

“Close enough…it’s gold plated. The best thing is that it only cost me $75! Ordinarily it’s $150, but I got it at half price! I also got her this watch. Pretty nice, huh? It’s even got a few glass diamonds in it. See?”

“Glass diamonds?” I asked. “Which are they, glass or diamonds?”

“I’m not real sure, but they’re shiny and the watch only cost me $50. It was on sale. Retail price of this thing is $199!”

“So for Christmas, you spent a total of $125 on the girl you’ve been dating for three years. And what is she getting you?.”

“Well, I know that she’s buying me an X-Box 360, and probably some sweaters and clothes. Oh, and one of those GPS devices. But she won’t actually know that I got these things on sale. Normally, they would have cost more. Besides, she’s going to love these compared with what I got her last year.”

“And what was that?”

“A coffee maker and a blender.”

“You know,” I said, “you’re going to have to kick it up a notch in the gift department because, you realize, that you’re going to end up marrying this girl.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Yes, necessarily. She’s invested three years in you. She’s not going to let you get away at this point.”

“Invested? You make it sound like she’s playing the stock market.”

“Yeah, well I just hope that she realizes that she’s not getting a Microsoft or Coca-Cola. You’re more like an Enron.”

“Enron or not,” he told me, “I just saved over $150! That’s a whole lot of beer, my friend, with a video game for my new X-Box thrown in!”

And really, what says Merry Christmas more than presents at discount prices?

how i got my job (commemorating six months of uninterrupted employment)

When I lost my job several months ago, I followed the predictable pattern that most suddenly unemployed people follow…which is to panic. Once this subsided, however, I started the job search and quickly realized that my resume needed some serious dusting off.

I sat, pen in hand, and tried to start detailing my previous job. What were my daily duties? What did I accomplish during my time there? What honors did I receive? I scribbled down bits and pieces of the job which I thought would sound most impressive. And after nearly 90 minutes, I stopped to reflect on what had been written…the total of which filled only two paragraphs and contained a lot of ‘developed’s and ‘assisted’s. Puny verbs which wouldn’t lead to a high paying job.

These puny verbs, combined with the fact that my resume looked much like a tennis match being played out on a sheet of paper - jobs bouncing back and forth across the page year after year - didn’t add to my confidence that future employment would soon be knocking at my door.

I needed help and, in desperation, turned to the first thing I could think of…the trusty thesaurus. Within minutes, all the ‘developed’s became ‘proposed’ and all of my ‘assisted’s became ‘supported’. Though these changes still made my past job sound just as thin and unimportant as the job actually was.

So I turned to the internet and googled ‘resume examples’ to get some help in turning my pathetically described job description into something that sounded brilliant.

A few clicks later and I was reading through other billing associates’ resumes. These folks were obviously more inspired with the written word than I was proving to be. Some girl named Jean made filing sound like an activity that only a PhD student could accomplish! And a guy named Chuck waxed poetic about the art of invoicing! I tried putting these mini-masterpieces into my own words, but in the end, Chuck’s and Jean’s words were much better, so I just borrowed whole sentences from them.

While the actual resume was looking much better, I realized that past experience in a billing department wasn’t really going to help me get a job in marketing or advertising…jobs that I realized I would enjoy much more than billing. So I turned again to the internet to find some further help with my resume.

Having already borrowed (and I use this term because plagiarized is much too hard to spell) sentences from Jean and Chuck, I took the next step in the ‘imitation-is-the-greatest-form-of-flattery’ department and began borrowing whole paragraphs from people. While I never worked for Nabisco, Steve’s six years as a Brand Manager sounded very impressive…so I borrowed three of his six years, making myself an instantly polished Brand Manager too. And Yvonne had spent four years as the Creative Director for a small marketing firm. A cut and paste later, and I had reinvented myself as a Creative Director as well.

Soon after, I was reading the resume of one very impressive and experienced individual. It wasn’t until minutes later that I realized this individual was me.

free at last, free at last!

I used to know a guy that refused to iron any clothes. The morning before work, he’d toss his outfit for the day into the dryer and, after 15 minutes on ‘tumble’, he’d pop them out, put them on - still warm and static clingy from doing laps around the inner sanctum of the machine - and presto, instant, hands-free ironing he would say.

I felt that he was incredibly lazy. Because as much as I hated ironing…a task which I still despise…I prided myself in my ironing effort. Skilled, I was not, but I always put forth effort.

True, most of my clothes had creases criss-crossing at odd angles throughout my shirts and pants. I could never seem to precisely line up the perfect creases on the clothes to match with my ironing. But still, I toiled above the hot, steam spewing iron, creating new creases slightly off-center of the existing creases, and told myself that I was accomplishing something.

My parents had always told me that doing things you didn’t want to do built character. And every time I picked up an iron, my character was being built exponentially. We’re talking Great Wall of China character.

But a love for ironing never developed. And the grid of creases that had characterized my wardrobe never diminished. Finally, I decided to give into temptation one day. As I pulled a pair of slacks out of my dryer, I looked at them and told myself that they really didn’t look too bad. So they went straight from dryer, to hanger, to closet.

Upon closer inspection, I realized that none of my clothes looked all that bad. Not nearly bad enough to warrant pulling out the ironing board and trying to tame my clothes with a hot iron. So they all went straight into the closet.

I had been a slave to ironing for years and now came an epiphany. I was free! My clothes look fine, and with a proper amount of squinting, they were virtually indistinguishable from freshly pressed clothes.

And I’m happy in my new ironless existence. I’ve shed the shackles of slavery. Never again will I let the man (or whoever else runs the electric iron division at Black and Decker) keep me down.

True, I may appear a little more wrinkled than you remember me, but I am wrinkled on my terms.