Triad of Ridiculousness: Part One

My stories of awkward hilarity are starting to backlog, but I want to start on today's occurrences (it was nonstop!) while they're somewhat fresh in my memory.  So I hope you enjoy the Triad of Ridiculousness, which includes this post and the next two.

That Damn Magazine!

One awkward part of my otherwise insanely awesome job is the calls I get when people want to cancel subscriptions.  I've since quit asking for reasons, but usually they volunteer the information anyway probably from the expectation that I'll ask.  Today I got one of those calls, and I'm so happy I wasn't around to answer the phone.  The voicemail went like this:

"Hi, Amy.  My name is Mrs. blah. My husband, blah, has been dead since February.  Will you please stop sending that damn magazine?!" *click*

Like any normal person would, I have some problems with this message.  First, if you're a stranger and plan on leaving me a crazy voicemail, don't include my name.  We're not on a first-name basis, and you creep me out. 

My second issue pertains the vagueness of the message.  I took out the names and replaced them with "blah" for a reason.  Of course, I'm not going to identify anyone, but I couldn't give you the names if I wanted to.  The person did not announciate clearly or spell the it out for me.

Now, not only do I not have a name, I don't have any sort of address or contact information to search by.  I can't call back this woman to get the information I need to cancel their subscription because she was a jerk and hung up without leaving a phone number.

Third problem:  we publish seven magazines.  That Damn Magazine is not one of them.

Forth problem:  we never got a letter from those people who send notices to businesses when someone dies.  Oh...really?  Oh yeah, that is right.  Those people don't exist.  I just made that thing up right now.  Really?  Usually the family notifies us that they don't need the magazine anymore?  Oh yeah, that sounds right.  They're usually not jerks about it? That's good.  Being a jerk about it would put me in an uncomfortable situation, even though I have no ill-intentions or control over her problem (I'm not all-knowing...yet!).

Of course I'm sorry for her loss, but it should be obvious that there's no way I can be aware of her situation unless she notifies me somehow. It's not like I sit at my desk all day and mail magazines to dead people while laughing evilly.

Here's the "sucky" part:  this problem isn't even over.  This very awkward voicemail got me (and her) nowhere, and next month I'll be getting another phone call.  She will likely be more mad next time around.  Awesome. 

Did some good come out of this?  Yes.  I got to forward the message to my coworkers, which resulted in a few laughs.  Am I going to hell if it in some form exists?  Likely.  But maybe my knowledge of voicemail etiquette will lead to at least some minor success there.

 Laterrrrrrsssssss!
-Amy

Unwritten Rules of Georgia Driving #1

Welcome to the School of Awkward Awareness and Prevention.  I'll be your professor.

The first step to avoiding an awkward situation is knowing where and when you're likely to encounter one.  According to the ASOA --Amy's Scale of Awkwardness (awaiting recognition from the scientific community)--car accidents and near misses are two of the worst circumstances you can find yourself in.  If you cause the accident, you have to deal with an onslaught of uncomfortable confrontations with the other driver, your passengers, police officers, insurance agents, etc.  It's bad.  With a near miss, you might encounter the other driver when stopped and be forced into the always nerve-wracking exchange of insults or death-stares.

When accidents aren't your fault, the awkwardness of the situation is more in your favor, but this is not guaranteed.  The other driver could be crazy and try to blame the accident on you.  Worse, they could be drunk, and then you have to battle your urge to punch them in the face.  Not fun. 

All in all, these are situations to avoid, if possible.  To help those who wish to challenge the death trap that is the Georgia highway system, I'll be occasionally posting the unwritten rules of Georgia driving.  Enjoy! 

#1  It is unnecessary to be in the lane closest to where you are turning.  If there are other cars coming, go ahead and cut them off.  What's important is that you get to where you need to go.

If for some strange reason you misplaced your balls and feel it's "dangerous" to cut people off, it's perfectly fine to stop exactly where you are and block traffic for as long as it takes to get into the other lane.  Don't bother putting on your turn signal.  It should be clear to everyone else why you stopped in the middle of the road.
More to come!

-Amy

Location Location Location

Location can be everything when it comes to the development of an awkward situation.  It can be a coincidental occurrence (wrong place at the wrong time).  For example, I was at lunch with a few people from work today when a coworker mentioned that she recently saw an attractive cop and was pleasantly surprised to see that he was in shape.  As soon as she blurted out that cops tend to look pudgy, two uniformed cops walked near our table (in case you're wondering, they weren't in shape...haha!).  Awkward.  I don't think they heard, but still, were we at a different location, that awkward moment probably wouldn't have happened.

While most awkward situations tend to be more coincidental--which make for the best stories--some can be avoided if you're aware of the source's location...unless you have to pass by that location multiple times a day.

Thus, I give you today's blog post.

Some people have this idea that the south is pretty much a giant redneck bar where everyone is racist and illiterate.  I can't speak for all parts of the south, but I can say that Atlanta seems pretty average.  It's not as normal as McHenry, Illinois, but all big cities are going to have some characters.

I said Atlanta is pretty normal...but...I work outside the city.  My office is a few buildings away from, of course, a redneck bar where everyone is racist and illiterate!  And this if the only one I've come across yet.

The sight of this bar is enough to make me feel awkward/mad/frustrated all day.  See pictures below:

One side...

Reverse side...

These are the current marquee postings outside of this bar that I pass multiple times a day.  The arguments they both attempt to make are so flawed that I'm not even going to waste your time by stating the obvious (even backers of the Arizona law would find the first sign to be an embarrassing reference).

The place is as dirty as it is offensive. But does it create an awkward situation?  I'd say so...probably a more tense one than anything, which is the worst kind of awkward.  This marquee is right across the street from a taqueria, supermercado, and other businesses ran by Latinos.  I get upset driving past it; I can't imagine how they feel.

Oh....redneck bar...you're like school in summertime---no class.  But I'm jus sayinj.

-Amy

Blogspiration

That title is a bit cheesy.  This post explains the story behind the blog (blog-inspiration...blogspiration...whatever).  It's not much of a story, but it's one illustration of the weirdness that I encounter almost on a daily basis.  I'm sure others run into weirder stuff, but I need something to blog about, and I'm trying to stick with a theme.  Why am I explaining myself to you?!  Anyway, here it is:

People force me to be awkward:  they put me in these weird situations.  I admit, others handle them a lot better than me, but it shouldn't be this way so often.  Exhibit A:

I'm in Subway, I order my sub, I pay.  I get my cup for my drink and head to the soda machine.  There's a lady at the machine with a teenage girl--mother and daughter or grandma and granddaughter, perhaps.  I wait behind them for my turn...and wait...and wait.

The teenage girl looks back at me a few times and attempts to hurry along the older woman.  Eventually, she gets fed up, rolls her eyes, and leaves the woman to go sit down at a table by herself.

At this time, there's some room (the woman was a bit on the larger side) at the soda machine for me to squeeze in, fill my cup, and get the frick out of there, since I was now late getting back from lunch.  I advanced to the machine only to find that the soda I wanted was farthest from me and right in front of the lady.  Awkward.

By this point, I was more than curious about what this lady was doing at the pop machine that would take this long.  Now next to her, I glanced down to see that she already had a few Subway cups filled and sitting on the counter in front of her.  What's more, though, was that she she had a small stack of them coming out of her purse.  She grabbed the next Subway cup (obvious to me by then from the embarrassed look on her granddaughter's/daughter's/whatever's face that they were brought from home and smuggled into the place via said purse), and proceeded to fill it.

What came next was the icing on the awkward-cake.  The woman, now aware of me beside her, decided the situation wasn't weird enough and started humming hymns and vocalizing the occasional "lord" and other phrases from the song.  Perhaps she thought that would make me judge her less.  Haha!

In all honesty, I could care less how many cups she pulled out of that purse (although she was taking it a bit to the extreme with multiple cups).  I'd be lying if I said I never thought about trying the same thing--if only movie theaters didn't change cup designs so often!--only I don't have the Southern Balls, and I don't know any hymns to hum.  Plus, I'd get caught, and as you know now, I'm trying to avoid awkward situations, not walk right into them.

Mostly, I was irritated with the situation because I just wanted her to move maybe 1 foot to her right so I could get my beverage and be out of there.  Just because you're going to steal like 5 drinks, you don't have to be rude and make others wait for you to finish up your thievery.  Haha!  So finally when my patience died, I extended my arm awkwardly in front of her body and under my soda of choice.  Eek!  Those were some uncomfortable, "lord"-filled seconds.

Lucky for you, I've taken some time to illustrate the moment: 

Notice the "Not to Scale" disclaimer.  I was much closer to her than was shown in this "reenactment," but I didn't want to the picture to get sloppy. It's pretty much dead-on other than that...yep...Haha!

Stay tuned for more tales of awkwardness and randomy-type stuff.

-Amy

Blog in progress . . .

Ugh!  I'm pretty sure I'm going to go back to school for computer something (science? programming? graphic/web design?).  I don't know yet, but it really bothers me when I can't figure out how to do something (like design this blog).  Haha!  I rather have everything customized, but I'm currently limited in the tools to do that (go Paint!).  Additionally, my knowledge of html currently goes as far as copy and paste with a few code tweaks here and there.

So explains this blog!  It's a work in progress as I figure stuff out.  It'll probably be some time before I have it how I want it, and I didn't want to delay "releasing it to the public" until then.

Fonts.  When I view my blog, I think it looks kinda awesome.  At the same time though, it's because I installed a new font to give it a customized look for the header and titles.  There's a problem, though.  I knew it wouldn't work because no one else will be able to see the sweet font, and it'll probably end up looking dumb without me knowing it. (Just in case you don't know how to install a new font--I didn't--these instructions worked perfectly on my work computer, which uses XP.  The laptop at home that uses Vista was a little different but not hard to figure out.  If you have troubles, Google search gets results).

Anyway, I'll probably end up changing the font to a boring one (boo!), but one that everyone will be able to see at least.  I want this to be an equal opportunity blog, after all.

Template.  It's funny and kinda dumb, isn't it?  This is supposed to be a blog about being awkward.   Red-monster-guy-in-jeans-grinning-at-you-like-an-idiot-as-you-read:  that's pretty awkward as far as ready-made blog templates go!  Plus, he reminds me of characters from the awkward (but true) stories I'll be sharing.

So that's the reasoning behind the design of this blog.  It'll probably change as I try to not get bored of doing this.  Cross your fingers because I've got stories to tell and paint cartoons to make!  Haha!  I say that like you're actually looking forward to them and that I'm not just doing this because I'm bored and need hobbies.

Completely unrelated:  my sweet tea (yeah, I drink sweet tea now, shut up) has a bunch of white mystery mini-chunks hanging out in the bottom of the cup.  They kind of look like dissolving food pieces or something (likely poison).  It's gross but the tea is tasty, and I don't have anything else to drink at the moment, so I'm going to keep on drinking.  If I am hospitalized shortly, tell the doctor about the white mystery mini-chunks.

-Amy

Go for blog

3....2...1...we have liftoff.  I'm starting a blog.  Again.  This might be number 3 or 4.  I don't know where the others went, and I haven't been good at keeping up with them in the past.  I figure now, though, I have no excuses.  I have a lot of free time.  A LOT.  I'm not in school anymore, so no homework to complain about.  I moved far away, so my social life isn't all that active.  And I have access to a computer during work.  The good kind of access. *wink*

Anyway, there are no excuses not to write, and I think a blog might be a good way to keep people up-to-date on my life.  Those who are interested at least.  And not that they have to be or should feel obligated to know what's going on with me.

So begins the over-analyzing.

I think I'm crazy, and that's partially the reason behind this blog.  My inability to keep my anxiety in check has lead to one good thing:  this blog!  And entertainment for you.  I hope to make you laugh and maybe spark some conversations about situations that I over-analyze.  Since I've moved to Atlanta, I feel like I'm having awkward occurrences on a daily basis.  It could be the southern culture that I'm just not used to, or it could be the fact that remaining jobless for about a year made me somewhat of a recluse.  Well, either way, I'm a part of society again, and it feels different this time around.  Enjoy my stories, illustrations, and photos, leave a comment (or keep it to yourself...whatever), and see how I'm attempting to deal with being totally freaking awkward.

-Amy