Overheard at Hardee's

Husband and I went to Hardee's for lunch yesterday. I really like Hardee's for their burgers, but they are no Carl's Jr. replacement for the east coast. They don't even have chicken nuggets! Carl's Jr. had those stars nuggets, remember? A little more expensive than say, Burger King or McDonald's, but totally worth it - but I digress.

As we were enjoying our lunch - watching trash lady from trash family panhandle in the parking lot - a dad and a group of four girls sat down near us. I'm a self-admitted eaves dropper, so I got a good earful of stories. One girl was going to St. Jude's Children's Hospital for their birthday to give sick children presents and whatnot. Which was really nice - but she turned it into a bragging contest of how saintly she was, and anyone that wanted presents on their birthday was simply selfish (color me guilty.)

But here's the kicker. After not paying attention for a while, voices are being raised, and I hear one girl say this to one of the other girls:

If you weren't adopted you'd be living on the streets of Guatemala getting diseases and stuff.

What?! I look at husband, and he totally missed it. I'm laughing. And the chaperon dad is saying, "Alright. That's enough. Let's chill out." And they leave.

I mean, who knows if she's right. Who knows if that girl is even from Guatemala. But the way she said it so matter-of-factly was classic. She wasn't trying to insult this girl - she was simply trying to be frank with her and tell her the alternative to where she is now.

They definitely kept the lunch entertaining.

And at this point, trash lady had left.

Read more...

Deep Thoughts from Accounting Class - Part 2

I'll tell you what. Writing down these random things are really getting me through the eight hour class. Learning accounting for that long, is just rough. So here's part 2. Again, feel free to answer my questions.

Deep Thoughts from Accounting

• Reservoir Dogs was a great movie, with a killer soundtrack.
• What else could be on a CPA exam? And how do people not fall asleep while taking it?
• I need more caffeine.
• Dude, throw your used dirty napkins out. They look like used tissues.
• We have this class once a week - this girl has worn the same outfit each week. What is it, her Wednesday outfit?
• Uh oh! Somebody got her hair did! Nice of you to show up. How many hundreds of questions will you ask today?
• When somebody mentions Big Ben, I do not think of the big clock in London.
• Holy crap, this guy is a million times more unfunny than me. Win!
  

Read more...

Nice Gentleman and My Schedule

The past few weeks have been really busy at work - deadlines and whatnot. So, last week I decided to start coming in a little early. And I did. So the first early morning, I walk to my cube and nice gentleman was in his office. I said my obligatory, "Good morning," and open the pod. But rather than the normal "hello", I get this:

"Wow. You're early today."

Ok. So NG knows my schedule. For some reason I find this incredibly odd. I mean, I used to come in this early - he didn't comment, "Wow. You're coming in later now," after I switched my schedule. Redardless. The big issue is this:

He again has made a comment that is ridiculously difficult to respond to. What is a creative response to "Wow. You're early today."? Because I don't know. What did I say in response?

"Ah. Yeah. Got a lot of work to do."

And then I walked into my cube.

Read more...

Deep Thoughts from Accounting

Yesterday, I was in an accounting class for the majority of my day. 7 hours, to be precise. It was a long class, and as much as I love numbers - accounting is a dry, dry subject. So my mind tends to wander when I'm faced with a dry subject like this. Yesterday, I took the liberty of writing these thoughts down. Feel free to answer any questions that I had... or respond to my complete stupidity:

My Deep Thoughts from Accounting Class

• Is this girl seriously wearing Mardi Gras beads in class?
• She's using air quotes. "Too" "Much".
• I need chapstick. Bad.
• This class may be boring, but this guy is still way better than my financial management professor in grad school.
• That guy looks like a ginger-version of Ed Norton.
• I really need to square away some contact information.
• Fiduciary tax is an tax on the income of an estate or trust. The executors have to file a form 1041.
• That guy over there reminds me of Beavis - or Butthead.
• How does your arm hair know when to stop growing?
  

Read more...

Burnt Popcorn

Burnt Popcorn

People burn popcorn in our office. It tends to alert the fire alarm, and we have to evacuate. We are not allowed back into our building until it is cleared by the fire department. There are over 5,000 people in my building.

Yesterday, I was talking with someone about the cost of lost productivity for the (low estimate) 30 minutes of time spent evacuating and coming back into the building.

We were under the assumption that the average salary of people in the building could be around $30.00/hour. This is just the salary paid to the employee, it does not include benefits paid by the employer, overhead, rent, etc. Simply the salary paid to the employee: $30.00/hour. Also working under the assumption that the burnt popcorn would occur in the middle of the week, so we'd be operating at almost full attendance of about 5,000 employees. The cost of the burnt popcorn and the 30 minutes of lost productivity would be $75,000. This is the low estimate. Being stuck out there for an hour would run us about $150,000 for one bag of burnt popcorn.

You could go on and on about the other external costs associated with the bag of burnt popcorn (taxpayer dollars to pay the fire department for being sent to the building, include the cost of benefits and overhead - but those are sunk costs that would have been paid anyway...) This was our thought exercise for the day.

I've worked in the building for over a year and a half. We have had three burnt popcorn drills that I can remember. Apparently, they were more frequent before the microwaves were replaced. Read more...