Idiot of the Week: Me, Myself, and I

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I was unusually pensive as I got ready for work this morning, and I came upon a metaphor between my daily routine and a relay race. In a relay, different team members complete different legs of the race. Fast team members create a lead, but slow team members can quickly waste it away. And I realized this is where I am going wrong; I can’t get to work on time because not all my Team Members are pulling their weight! Get Out of Bed Marisa is the worst, I don’t know who picked her to start. She almost never gives us a lead, hitting snooze every five minutes and making lame excuses like, “I’m not sleeping, I am deciding what to wear today.” But Get Dressed Marisa doesn’t ever seem to get that memo because she wastes more time standing in front of her closet with a blank stare until she gives up and picks out black pants and a black shirt. Don’t even get me started on Take a Shower Marisa. She just stands there like she is shooting a Dove commercial until the hot water runs out. It usually falls to Hair and Makeup Marisa to pick up the slack. Any grand plans she had are abandoned for a quick swish of mascara and a pony tail.

But today was different. You see, Get Out of Bed Marisa ate a lot of salty food yesterday, which meant she drank a lot of water, which meant she really had to pee by 6am. Here it is, the lead we’ve been waiting for. Take a Shower Marisa didn’t even have to complete her leg of the race because after a month of being lazy and making excuses, she finally went to the gym and had showered the night before. Add 25 minutes to the lead. Even Get Dressed Marisa knew what she was doing today, saving more precious time. It all came down to Hair and Makeup Marisa, a pro at throwing something together and running out the door. But since I have the extra time, thought Hair and Makeup Marisa…. And just like that the lead was lost. Time flies when you are trying a new technique with your straight iron for the first time only to realize that your hair still looks bad and have to start from scratch. I just want to know, Hair and Makeup Marisa, was it worth it? You could have used that lead to leave work early today, but instead you spent it on your hair. Tell me, does the wall you face appreciate your new look? Is your computer monitor impressed by your attempt at beach waves? Let me remind you who you work for here. You aren’t on Team Look Good For Strangers, you are on Team The Sooner I Get to Work, The Sooner I Can Leave and Start Enjoying My Me Time. Get it together unless you want to be cut from the team altogether. You are nice to have but we can live without you.

Idiot of the Week: How Does that Foot Taste in Your Mouth?

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This week’s IOTW comes to us all the way from the West Coast, where my friend Brooke just wrapped up a summer internship. On one of her final days, a full-time colleague at her firm walks up to her and greets her by saying, “So you are the only one of the interns who didn’t get hired on, huh?” This isn’t the most tactfully stated observation. It’s also not a great way to start a conversation. Most people open with a “hi, hello, how are you” before they jump right in to their inappropriate questions. Now, this colleague had no ill intention and did not wish to imply that Brooke was the last kid picked in gym class, or the sad, pathetic, unemployable leftovers. Brooke is a stellar candidate for any job, and had in fact already been offered one in another area of the firm. In IOTW’s mind, he was simply making an observation. “The grass is green. The sky is blue. Everyone got hired, except for you!” And this is the problem with tactless people – they don’t even realize they are doing something wrong. But that doesn’t make it any less offensive. The rules still apply. There are certain things you just can’t go around saying to people.

Photo Credit: fanfarefoodie.wordpress.com

Photo Credit: fanfarefoodie.wordpress.com

And if I have to follow the rules, so should everybody else! If you have a social or neurological disorder that prevents you from reading situations and applying social sensitivity, I understand that is beyond your control. But otherwise, you don’t get a free pass to be rude just because you are fucking clueless. That’s your fault.

Do you think I like being tactful? Hell no! It is tedious. Do you know how much time I waste thinking of the polite way to phrase things? It’s basically all people do at work. Hmm, what is the polite way of saying, “I just told you that yesterday,” or “The answer to your question is in the email you just replied to. Learn how to fucking read.” How do I explain, “That is in no way my job so I really can’t imagine why you are asking me this.” How do I interrupt this person to say, “My keys are still in the ignition, so please wait until I am at my desk, or at least out of my car, to start asking me these questions.”

And don’t you think I’d like to blurt out my observations? I’d fucking love it! I went to the zoo last week and the most fascinating exhibit I saw was a homo sapien wearing a shredded t-shirt, in the shape of a cross, that showed right through to her bra and enormous gut. I wanted to gawk and ask her what in the world led her to that wardrobe decision. But instead I looked away like I had seen nothing out of the ordinary, as if she were the 100th topless obese woman I had seen that day. Been there, seen that, got the (shredded) t-shirt. Being tactful is everyone’s cross to bear. Sometimes it means bearing the bare skin behind a cross, but usually it means keeping your damn mouth shut!

If It Doesn’t Fit, You Must a-Quit Wearing It

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One of the many things I will never understand about people is why they choose to buy clothes that are two sizes too small for them. Well, I do know why. Ye olde Wishful Thinking. You don’t want to be a L, you want to be a S. So you buy the Small, thinking it will make you look small. But it doesn’t. It makes you look like a sausage exploding out of its casing.

Unfortunately, wishful thinking is not effective in these situations. Much like it does not turn Monday into Friday, it will also fail to make you shrink. So I will say that I understand this delusional thought process up until the point when you put on these tiny clothes and look in the mirror. Once you have that proof…how are you still making these poor decisions?

People fervently believe that smaller clothes make you look smaller and bigger clothes make you look bigger. Um….no. I will admit, in the extreme, big clothes can make you look big. If I put on a Muumuu, I might look like a house. But when I wear this certain pair of shorts I have that is two sizes too big because they were on sale and I was determined to get them even if they didn’t fit at all, I don’t look like a house; I look like one of those starving kids on the Feed this Sad, Starving Kid for 10 Cents a Day (If You Don’t, You Have No Soul) commercials. My little twig legs are standing there all lonely-looking inside my cavernous shorts. It’s great. But take those same legs, and stick them into a pair of shorts I still have from high school, and my legs suddenly look like dough exploding out of a Pillsbury can of biscuits.

Photo credit: workingmansdiary.com

Photo credit: workingmansdiary.com

I squeeze my legs through them and have a flashback to my days of playing with the Play Doh Fun Factory. How can I look thin one day and fat the next? Because it’s not just about what size your body is, but what size you put on your body. Even a 94-pound model can have a Gus Gus moment if you put small enough clothes on her.

So get over this mental block of refusing to buy a bigger size. Just accept the size you truly are. Not because it is “important to accept yourself” blablabla – but because it will make you look better! Do you really think that somebody is going to be impressed that you can fit into a 0? Not if you “fit” into it like this:

Photo credit: thejunoesque.com

“It fits!”
Photo credit: thejunoesque.com

Besides, who is even going to know what size you are wearing? No one. That’s who. Unless of course you forget to take that sticker off the front that repeats your size 12 times like I sometimes do. Or unless you proactively point out to people what tiny sizes you wear like some pathetic, desperate-for-validation loser. Or unless you have friends who go around pulling the tag out of your pants to read the size. In which case, I think you’ll be able to quickly change the subject from the size of your clothes to, “You fucking creep, get your hands out of my pants!”

But outside of those rare scenarios, no one can see what size you are wearing. Everyone, however, can see your muffin top spilling out over your jeans like an erupting volcano. So think long and hard about what you are really achieving here before you buy that XXS.

Idiot of the Week: An Open Letter to the Old Navy Director of Email Marketing

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Dear Sir or Madam:

I regret to inform you that you are truly terrible at your job. Although, I don’t actually regret it, because you really should know better.  I’m sure you have a very fancy degree from a very fancy institution, but you seem to have neglected one basic principle that anyone with an email address could have told you: nobody wants to hear from you every single day. This is called “spamming the shit out of people.” You may recall that term from business school. I admit, I have no formal training in marketing like you surely do, but I do have an extensive background as a consumer and receiver of emails. And I can tell you that this approach of inundation is not effective.

Fun fact: did you know that our noses appear constantly in our field of vision, but our brains choose to ignore them because they are irrelevant? That is also what’s happened with your emails. They are such a standard fixture in my inbox that my brain has taken the liberty of erasing them from my field of vision. I don’t even see them, and I definitely don’t open them, read them, or visit your website because of them. Your subject line could read, “Marisa, I can’t believe you just laid down on your bed in the same clothes you wore on the metro, that is disgusting. How did I know that? I am watching you from your window!” and I wouldn’t bat an eye.

In addition to “playing it cool,” instead of contacting me with the tenacity of a jealous ex-boyfriend,  another concept you have failed to value is “the element of surprise.” If there is one thing I have learned after years of daily email notifications, it’s that you have a sale every day! Congratulations, you’ve just dissolved all sense of urgency for visiting your site. Why would I rush to take advantage of this sale when I know that a new one will start tomorrow? You aren’t even trying to pretend that there is a reason for your sales anymore. It used to be only on holidays – Black Friday Sale! Then you extended it to  seasons – Spring has Sprung Sale! Now you will have a sale for literally anything. This week I got an email from you saying “Happy Wednesday! 25% off!” Wednesday, really? Apparently regularly scheduled days of the week are cause for a sale now. What’s next? I Just Saved a Ton of Money on My Car Insurance Sale? I Pooped Today Sale?

Photo credit: zazzle.com

Photo credit: zazzle.com

Not only have you succeeded in making a sale old hat, but you have been feeding me scores of data for a trend analysis. Thanks to your daily emails, I have subconsciously observed patterns in your promotions, upon which I now base my shopping behavior; I know the count, and I know when to hit and when to stand. A 15% off sale? You’re joking right? 20% off? Better, but I’ll wait. 25% off and free shipping? It’s time to pounce. And if not, that’s okay too. Because in a few days, the sale will be back on to celebrate Tuesday or the sky being blue or something else earth-shattering.

This is yet another item to add to the list of things you should understand but obviously don’t: “Why Sales Work.” A sale drives business because people think they are getting a bargain. “This shirt is worth $25 but I am getting it for $17! I have beaten the system!” But when you have a sale every day, you devalue your product. Your customers, stupid as we are, will eventually catch on that maybe that shirt is only worth $17 in the first place if you are selling it for $17 every damn day. And that maybe you never even intended for it to be sold at the full retail price because it isn’t worth the full retail price, and only made the full retail price $25 so you could mark it down and trick customers into thinking they are getting that high $25 quality for a low $17 price. Eventually, when the adrenaline from saving $8 wears off, customers will realize that the system has been beating them this whole time.  Aren’t you the least bit worried what could happen when masses of customers grow wise to this mistreatment and decide to fight back, or have you not seen Rise of the Planet of the Apes?

While you consider this, you should also warn your cronies at the outlet mall because they are running the same game. Do you know how excited people get when they see a sign in a store window that says, “All stock 60% off!” Let me just tell you it is a near shit-your-pants level of excitement. You picture yourself looting the store and tossing the cashier $13 as you leave dragging a giant sack of merchandise behind you. So can you imagine how disappointed people get when they go inside to find that a t-shirt still costs $40 after that hefty discount because everything in the store has been marked up 100% so it could be marked down 60% at the register? Or did you think we wouldn’t notice? That kind of up and down can make for a very emotionally unstable customer.

I don’t know how you’ve managed to make so many mistakes, but I beseech you, correct some of them before we have a riot on our hands.

All the best,

Marisa