The Economy Has Forced Me To Take Drastic Measures

I think it’s safe to say that no one wants to lose their jobs or carry around a beverage mug bigger than their head. So far, I have been faced with one of these grim realities. I have become one of those women you see toting those giant plastic insulated mugs filled with carbonated soda. And you just know that these women are trying too “even things out” by filling that sucker with diet coke, only mine is filled with regular coke. Ha! Fooled you.

As far as the losing the job thing, I sure hope it doesn’t happen, but the construction industry has been hit hard by the troubled economy. In turn, the architectural community (our job field) is experiencing a slow down and some companies are laying off employees or even asking employees to take a reduction in salary. Most likely, Jeremy and I will have our salaries slashed in 2009, and that’s if we’re one of the lucky ones.

I say we’d be lucky because just the other day I threatened to light my co-worker’s chair on fire. And you should know that we all have Aeron chairs at work, so yeah, it was a pretty big deal. People go nuts for those things.

In my defense, my threat was only in jest, but perhaps my timing was not the best. I think management took it pretty well, all things considered. They even pulled me in a closed-door meeting to make everyone outside the closed-door meeting think I was in serious trouble. My superiors even went so far as to have the HR department type up a paper, which I signed, stating that I would not threaten to cause harm to any Aeron chairs so long as I was employed by the firm. Apparently I’m free to put a flame to the cheap Costco chair in the break room, but not the fancy designer chairs. See? I told you it was a pretty big deal.

Anyway, I seem to have gotten side-tracked here. You see, this post is about how I discovered a small way to tighten the old purse strings whilst still indulging in the occasional fountain beverage.

Allow me to explain. I am only in the office three days a week. On those days I require a 44 oz carbonated beverage at my desk in order to successfully make it through the day without “allegedly” threatening to inflict unprovoked harm to inanimate objects in the office. The price I pay for pleasure/sanity in a plastic cup? A cool $1.47.

Now, you coffee drinkers out there are probably scoffing at me right now as you sip your frappuccino from Starbucks at just over $5 a cup. But think, people. I live in Utah. Coffee is barely legal here and if you’re caught drinking it in public, you can be subjected to a hefty fine. Don’t even get me started on what happens to you if you’re caught dancing in public. You do know that Footloose was filmed here don’t you? Remember how those kids won in the end and got their dance? In public? Yeah, that trouble maker Kevin Bacon and those evil dance-seeking kids would never be able to so much as do a jazz square in Utah.

Anyway, back to my fountain drink addiction. If you do the math, at $1.47 a pop, three times a week, adds up to $4.41 per week. If you multiply that by four (average number of weeks in a month), that winds up being a whopping $17.64 in soda pop.

Notice that I wrote if YOU add it up you’ll end up with 17 bucks and some change. When I added it up, it looked as though I was spending $176.40 on soda per month. I immediately freaked out and phoned up Jeremy hyperventilating to him that I was spending almost 200 dollars a month on fountain sodas and that I could see no way to rectify the situation because I wasn't willing to give up my sugar-filled caffeine high. After Jeremy did some deep breathing exercises with me and showed me exactly how decimals points work in multiplication, eventually I settled down. Moments later, my dear husband walked past my work desk and slammed this sucker down with such great force that it shook my family size bag of M&Ms to the floor.


Yep, it’s my Maverick 44 oz super insulated soft drink mug. When it’s filled up with soda, it’s a chore just to lift the thing. I count it as part of my resistance routine whenever I lift it to my mouth to take a sip. A gal can never have too much wrist definition, you know? Annnnnnd, it costs only 59 cents to fill up. It’s a win-win really if you think about it.

As an aside, ‘Maverick’ refers to a local convenience store chain throughout the Intermountain West. Their slogan is “Adventures First Stop!” But I submit that it is actually adventure’s last stop. I’ve been in our local Maverick at odd times and the folks that show up there at the wee hours of the morning are definitely on their way home after an adventure gone wrong. I mean, who shows up to work wearing no pants and only a coat? Let me clarify: who shows up to work wearing a coat holding their pants rolled up in their arms? Someone who doesn’t want a job, that’s who. Ironically, the pant less person I saw at Maverick was an off-duty Maverick employee. I never saw him at that particular store again. Pity, he was one of my favorites and he had great legs.

As a second aside (as if this post wasn’t chock filled with tangents already) I’m totally counting this as a HASAY post because since that giant sucker of a mug came into my life just over a month ago, I have filled it up with ice water. Healthy. Also, if you were paying attention, you would have picked up that I use it as a weight when doing resistance exercises. Again, win-win.

*A third aside, everything in this post is true except for the part about me being pulled into a closed-door meeting. When I threatened to set a chair on fire, my boss only looked at me for a few moments then went back to working. After eleven years, he's pretty much heard it all from me.