The Seven Minute Rule

My boss confuses the fuck out of me. People think that *I* am random. They need to meet him. For the sake of this blog, we’ll call him Al from here on out. And the company I work for is Team O. 


One of my many confusing conversations with Al happened not too long ago, and resulted in the installation of the “seven minute” rule at work. What is the seven minute rule? Well, let me tell you how it all began …

One of my friends was looking for a job and we happened to be hiring. I asked him to send me his resume and I’d recommend him to my boss. Easy, right? Yeah… That’s what I thought. We both fail.

So I mosey down the hallway to Al’s office and ask if I can give him a resume. And the conversation went like this:

Karin: Hey Al, I have my friend’s resume. I think he’d be an awesome addition to the team!

Al: come in please, and sit down.

**ominous feeling**

Karin: uh… ok?

**Karin sits**

Al: You know, Team O pays you every second Friday.

Karin: Right…. Bi weekly payments and such…

Al: The money is given to you every second Friday.

Karin: Ok.

Al: You always know when the money is coming in.

Karin: Right.

Al: If you start your own company, you never know when the money is coming in

Karin: …

Al: The grass is always greener you know. There 

are lumps and bumps in life but Team O helps you with those by paying you every second Friday.

Karin: …

**At this point I was listening down the hallway, hoping to hear someone coming down looking for me so I can leave**

Al: You always know when money is coming in, because it’s the same time every time. Every second Friday.

Karin: uh…

Al: Starting your own business is a bad idea. You know why?

Karin: I get paid every second Friday?

**Still watching the door, praying for someone to save me**

Al: RIGHT!

Karin: So…

Al: YOU WILL ALWAYS KNOW WHEN YOUR MONEY IS COMING IN

Karin: uh… About that resume?

Al: Have your friend call me.

**awkward silence**

Karin: Can I go now?

Al: Yes.

Please Note: This conversation actually went on like this for about 10-15 minutes.

I get up, walk as quickly as I can OUT of his office (so he can’t call me back in) and run back to my desk. I then have everyone in the room staring at me, and they go “WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN!” since I was gone for so long.

 I DON’T FUCKING KNOW, PEOPLE! I DON’T FUCKING KNOW WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED! BUT NO ONE FUCKING SAVED ME!

I had to explain the situation, which had the end result of:

To ensure this does not happen in the future, if anyone leaves their desk and is gone for more than 7 minutes, the search party will be sent. So far we have not had to enforce this rule, but you never know. 

THE BUTTONS

Recently my friend Jaime(NOT AIMEE) decided she wanted to learn to crochet. As I am a firm believer in group suffering, I agreed to learn with her. It took many (MANY) failed attempts, but we finally figured it out. Jaime promptly started making the cutest hats ever for her new son.

**please note a hobby like this will almost definitely make your child hate you in the future**

Her most recent achievement was a snowman hat:

(I edited out the world’s cutest baby as I don’t want random strangers seeing him. If he’s to be stolen, it will be by ME… this is NOT AIMEE’S baby)

After congratulating her for such an awesome hat, Jaime (NOT AIMEE) looks at me and goes:

Jaime: Want to know where I got the buttons?

Me: Uh…

Please note at this point I completely thought that she’d done something like ninja her way into a neighbour’s house to steal their clothes and rip the buttons off.

Surprisingly I was not far off…

Jaime leaves the room a moment and comes back with:

At first glance I was like “oh, a random blazer”, but no. NO. This was a dress jacket. You know, one of those fancy coats men wear when they have to look all nice and sophisticated. And on closer inspection:

Yeah. That’s right. It’s missing its buttons. ALL its buttons.

Me: So… yeah… that’s a jacket

Jaime: It sure is!

Me: Where did you get such a previously fine jacket?

Jaime: My husband’s closet

Me: …

Me: …

Me: …

Me: Ok. Why did you take the buttons of his coat rather than going to the store and buying said buttons?

Jaime: I didn’t feel like going out.

Me: Oh.

Surprisingly THAT seems logical to me!

Jaime: So… could you bring this to your work and get rid of it?

Me: Why?

Jaime: A missing coat is easier to explain than a coat that’s missing parts of it

This too seemed logical.

Me: Ok, I’ll drop it off at a donation bank or give it to a hobo

Jaime: Why would a hobo want a jacket with no buttons?

Me: What’s warmer??? A coat without buttons or NO coat?

Jaime: But it has no buttons.

Obviously our logic only follows the same line of reasoning on very limited things. 


On a completely unrelated note, my fortune cookie told me to “Learn Chinese, Beansprout”.

What the fuck does that even mean?????????

P.S. Anyone want a jacket?

P.P.S. I too learned to crochet, not as awesome as Jaime though… but look! I’m a kitty!

P.P.P.S. you can totally see my perfect eyebrows





****UPDATE**** IM conversation with Aimee (yeah it's totally Aimee...) earlier today:

Aimee: Jay read the eyebrow blog

Karin: hahahahaha

Aimee: He laughed so hard he had tears rolling down his face

Karin: did you hide the buttons from him

Aimee: I'm like ok yeah you think that's funny read the button one

Aimee: FYI I'm the only one laughing with tears rolling down my face lmfao

Karin: hahaha I'm laughing now.... did he read the buttons one

Aimiee: Yes he did 

Karin: and

Aimee: I told him one day he will find it just as funny

Karin: was he pissed

Aimee: Who cares nolans hat needed buttons lol

Eyebrows

Recently Dee and I decided to visit our good friend Aimee. While having a girl’s night with delicious food and movies and all those things girls do (minus the panties pillow fights and practising kissing and such…), I vocalized the need for eyebrow maintenance soon. This prompted the response from Aimee of:

I’d never seen any of her previous work so I thought this was a marvelous idea as it required minimal effort on my part with the outcome I desired… groomed eyebrows.

Aimee went and collected all of her eyebrow gear, which included eyebrow stencils, tweezers, scissors and some kind of dust that if you put it on stuff you’re not supposed to pluck that. I don’t get how it works as the dust doesn’t magically make the hair stay in place and avoid the tweezers nor does it not magically spread from one location to another… but that is neither here nor there.

I laid down, Aimee plucked away, and then about ten minutes later, proclaimed she was done:

My eyebrows turned out awesome. So I could stand by Aimee’s statement from the beginning. She was indeed awesome at doing eyebrows. This convinced Dee it would be a good idea for her to get her eyebrows done too.

Apparently Aimee’s awesome eyebrow skills have a 1 person/night limit.

Dee laid down, I held the baby (and NO! I did not run off with the baby… this time…) and Aimee started plucking away. She completed eyebrow #1 with no problems. Onto eyebrow #2.  At this point she dropped her stencil and had to pick it up and re-position it. This was the beginning of the downfall. After about 15 minutes she proclaims “I’M DONE!” and the sequence of Aimee faces went something like this:

Followed by:

“Uh Karin.. can you come here? “

I mosied on over, glanced down, and this is what I saw:

Now I know at first glance it looks like they’re fine. But really what I saw was this:

HOLY FUCK AIMEE WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED!!!!

Of course, it’s fixable, as long as Dee likes the SMALLER eyebrow. So Dee rushes off to the bathroom to examine, and I look at Aimee and it goes something like this:

Me: So… uh… did you use the same stencil for BOTH eyebrows?

Aimee: Yes, of course I did!

Me: Are you sure?

Aimee: YES! I AM NOT STUPID!

Me: Oh ok… uh, so the stencil on the ground by your foot… that’s NOT the one that you used for eyebrow #1, right?

Aimee: No, of course not

*she bends over and picks it up*

Aimee: Aw fuck.

Me: Eyebrow #1?

Aimee: SHHHHH! DON’T TELL DEE

Disclaimer: this is not me telling you, Dee. If you choose to read this, I have no control over what information you come across

At this time, Dee comes back in and states she does in fact, like the small eyebrow better. So she lays back down and Aimee goes back to plucking with the stencil that was found on the ground. Yes, you read this right. Dee trusted her to correct this.

Dee is a slow learner sometimes.

So about 15 minutes later, Aimee proclaims that again, she is in fact finished plucking. I come over to examine and look down. This is what I see:

Me: Uh, Aimee… Did you use the same stencil on both eyebrows this time?

Aimee: Yes of cou… FUCK!

So again, Dee was lopsided. And again… wait for it… Dee lays down and lets Aimee go to work on fixing it. Seriously. At this point any more fuck ups and we’d have to shave them off and draw them on!!!

Luckily third time was a charm in this case and Dee’s eyebrows matched and looked great. But really. Three times, Dee? THREE TIMES?

The Wisdom From a Brother

I may not have tons of things to say about my brothers that fall in the awesome category, but in some instances, they have shared a form of wisdom. Really random assed wisdom that most likely will never help me out in life (much like math past the 5^th grade) but wisdom none the less.

When I was 18, I was the last child in the household. At this point both of my brothers had moved out and I decided the place for the hip kids was sleeping in the tiny bedroom in the basement. I also thought sleeping on a futon on the floor was the epitome of cool. 

The setting was late at night, Christmas Eve. I had just fallen into a deep(ish) sleep, when an odd smell accompanied with a weird shuffling noise brought me right back to awake. The smell invaded my nose, a smell of garbage mixed with rotten meat and old beer. The shuffling noise sounded like someone dragging of carcass around the carpet. I was too terrified to open my eyes, knowing I would see this:

I know we’ve all had fears of Death dragging dead hobos through our bedrooms. It’s really hard to get hobo blood out of the carpets.

Finally I got the courage to open my eyes and look. Was it Death? No. But I kinda wished it was. There wasn’t even a hobo! Well technically there was… This is what I gazed upon:

S was squatting all gargoyle style in the middle of my floor clutching a beer can glaring at me. The smell was him. Farting. A lot. My cool tiny basement bedroom suddenly became an airtight chamber of poisonous gas that didn’t have enough room to expand.

As I lay there trying to hold my breath and figure out what the fuck S was doing in my room squatting on the floor glaring at me, he opened his mouth and let out his words of wisdom. What were they, you ask? I’m not sure if you’re prepared for this. Take a deep breath and get ready. This may be the most important piece of information anyone will ever share with you.

S opened his slurring mouth, let out a burp, and his words of wisdom were:

If a police officer offers you a ride home, don’t believe him.

He then let out one more squeaker fart, and shuffled out of the room.

I would have preferred the dead hobo. It would have smelled better too.

Fond Childhood Memories #3 – Haircuts

The awesome forces that be graced me with 2 older brothers and apparently they didn’t come with receipts so I couldn’t return them. Believe me. I tried. A lot. Seriously, if there are any takers, I’m willing to PAY YOU to take them. Even now when I’m in my late 20s.

My brother S (the middle one) went through several phases in his life, trying to decide what he wanted to be when he grew up. There was the absentee phase, the hobo phase, and unfortunately for J (the oldest one) and I - the barber phase.

My horrible haircut came courtesy of my brother learning from school what a “whirlee” was. When I was around 9, S came home and came up to J and I and started going on about a whirlee. J did not know what this was, and when S offered to show him, he happily accepted. BIG MISTAKE.

I have no idea why J listened to what S told him to do, but he WILLINGLY stuck his head in the toilet bowl at which point S shoved his head into the water and flushed. J has always had a HUGE EFFING AFRO and this got completely saturated with toilet water. The sick sick toilet water that was in the toilet in the bathroom the boys used. Only the boys used. And never cleaned.  I unfortunately started laughing, at which point S decided to even it out - I needed a whirlee too.

Both my brothers were much bigger than I was, so they were able to easily overpower me and force my head into the toilet. This may not have been as devastating had I not had almost waist length hair at the time. When the water flushed, my hair went down the toilet and got stuck in the piping while still attached to my head. This was problematic as the toilet tends to refill itself after flushing. After what I’m sure was a very heated internal debate in my brother’s head on whether or not to rescue me, he finally chose not to let me drown in the fucking disgusting water (it would have been hard to explain to my parents). To save me, it required cutting off my hair. All of it. ALL OF IT. And as quickly as possible.

Due to the nature of the forced change in hairdo, the ends were not as even as they could have been. When my face came out of the toilet, I had lopsided wet chunks of disgusting hair on the side of my face, and smelled like a sewer. This is when my parents came home, and my mom had to attempt to salvage my hair.

It took YEARS for my hair to grow back. And I still have not gotten over the trauma of that water touching my skin. I’m pretty sure every single bad thing I’ve ever done can be related to that toilet water. It seeped into my soul and crushed the goodness in my heart.

Surprisingly not even a year later, J got an awesome haircut too, which almost matched mine in the epic way it was received. S had discovered that if you use PAM cooking spray with a match, you have a homemade flame thrower. He was extremely excited and called J out to see. S was smart enough to use his new found lawsuit waiting to happen on the exterior patio (next to a giant old maple tree…) but didn’t think not to AIM it at people. I decided to stay in the kitchen, which probably was a good plan. The conversation overheard was:

S: Yeah! Look! I just take this match and light it, and then spray this PAM and…

**whoosh noise**

J: HEY! That’s cool!!!! Do it again!

**woosh noise**

J: Woah that was close!

S: Uh.. shit.

J: Do you smell burning????

At this point J comes to the porch door and looks at me and goes, “Is it as bad as I think it may be?”

Yes. Yes it really fucking was. We promptly shaved his head and informed mom and dad that he needed to cut his hair for school.

S eventually decided that being a hobo bum slacking assface was waaaay below his paygrade capabilities. He’s now in the military.

It’s scary as shit right?