The Lifetime Movie Drinking Game

If you're not familiar with Lifetime: Television For Women, you should be. Lifetime produces the campiest, most hilarious made for TV movies (for women!) to be had. You can watch Tori Spelling and Tiffany Amber Theissan be murdered in the same 4 hour block if you're lucky. It's nothing but cheerleaders getting whacked and women being beaten. It's good old fashioned campy entertainment. For women.

Anyway, imagine my surprise when I found out that there was no Lifetime Movie Drinking Game available on the internet! At least not when you only look at the first four results Google displayed. I decided it was my God given duty to fill this gap in the drinking game industry. So, without further ado, I present...

The Lifetime Movie Drinking Game

Every time a woman cries, take a drink.
Every time a man cries, take 2 drinks.
Every time someone dies, take a drink.
…take 2 drinks if they were murdered.
…take 3 drinks if they died of a chronic illness such as AIDS or cancer.
…take 4 drinks if they died of a mental illness such as anorexia, bulimia, or a drug overdose.
Take 1 drink for every TV or movie actor you notice before their career took off.
Take 2 drinks for every TV or movie actor you notice from after their career sunk.
Take 1 drink every time you see someone who was involved in an Aaron Spelling project in the 90’s.
Take 1 drink whenever a teenager becomes pregnant.
…take 2 drinks if she becomes pregnant by a rape or incest.
Every time a man beats a woman, take a drink.
Every time a woman beats another woman, take a drink.
Every time someone beats a child, take 2 drinks.
Every time a woman beats a man, take 2 drinks.
Every time someone falls into the seedy world of drugs, take a drink.
Every time someone comes out as a homosexual/transgendered person, take a drink.
Every time the main character gets divorced or abandoned, take a drink.
Every time the main character is interviewed by the police, take a drink.
Every time a baby is given up for adoption, take a drink.
…take 2 drinks when the birth mother makes a surprise appearance in the older child’s life.
…if this turns out to have been a bad idea, take 3 drinks.
…if the child is unhappy with his/her (oh who am I kidding, of COURSE it’s a her) adoptive parents and likes the birth mother better, take 4 drinks.
…if this somehow ends to murder, finish the bottle.
Every time a cheerleader appears on camera, take a drink.
…take 2 drinks every time one of them dies.
…take 3 drinks if one is murdered.
Every time a character is raped, take a drink.
…if it was a date rape, take 2 drinks.
…if the character was drunk, take 3 drinks.
…if the character was drugged, take 4 drinks.
…if this leads to a pregnancy, take 5 drinks.
…if this results in a legal battle, take 6 drinks.
…if the case ends favorably for the victim, finish your bottle.
Every time you see a subtitle to a movie (ie. Moment of Truth: Not Without My Handbag: The Lucious Divine Story) take a drink for each individual title.
Every time a main character becomes a prostitute or stripper, take a drink.
…take 2 drinks if she’s forced into it by circumstances.
…take 3 drinks if she’s forced into it by a man.
…take 4 drinks if this some how leads to murder.
Everytime a woman has A Past, take a drink.
...take 2 drinks if this is obvious foreshadowing if what is about to happen.
...take 3 drinks if it's foreshadowing her involvement in A Cause.
...take 4 drinks if it's foreshadowing her future involvement with another woman who has a similar Past.

Crazy People are Everywhere

So, the thing about working in customer service is that 90% of the people you will come into contact with on a daily basis are crazy.

Take, for example, this true life anecdote from my day:

I am coming off of break and a woman at the self-checkouts waves me over and asks for help. I am aware that I probably won't be able to do anything unless it's a stupid question, but I go over anyway.

"These were supposed to be buy one get one free, but they're not being taken off!"

"Okay, well you see how they were both $2.80 and after you scanned each one, it took $1.40 off?"

"Well, that's not really buy one get one free!"

"Well, this way you get the same discount if you buy an odd number of the products. It's the same price."

"But that's not right! It's NOT buy one get one free! I should get one free!"

At that point I managed to excuse myself and run fast for my register where at least the crazy people usually don't notice when things are rung up differently than they expect.

But it's not just customers. Sure, the customers are absolutely fucking psycho, but my coworkers are just as bad. I've already done a post on my whacko boss, so I'll leave him out of it for now. My coworkers are just as bad. I've had one normal coworker since I started at Food Mart. A bagger/cashier with spina bifida who actually did his work quietly, chatted between customers, was friendly to a fault, and got paid a dollar less an hour than me after 3 years with the company. He ended up transferring to a higher paid department and was replaced by Sexy Bagger who transferred in from a different store long enough to cause every teenage girl who works the front end to become absolutely smitten with him and then transferred to a different department. We finally ended up with BigTall, who has yet to get a better job so he's stuck with us.

I work in what we in the business call "the front end" which basically means we're the lowest paid people who have the most contact with the customers. Everybody who spends the majority of their day between the candy racks and the plate glass windows is considered the front end. We mostly spend our time getting yelled at and trying desperately to avoid actually dealing with the customers. That's right, everything you've ever suspected about the people behind the register? It's all true. We really ARE thinking sarcastic things about you even as we smile at you. Well, that's not ENTIRELY true. Basically, you just don't want to be a memorable customer. That's not to say we don't have good customers who we enjoy very much and remember from day to day, but unless you're particularly funny or have really cute kids or have the word "HOOLIGAN" tattooed across the side of your shaved skull, I'm not going to remember you unless you were a terrible person who I made a mental note to avoid at all costs.

There are lots of ways to be an asshole I'll remember you for. You could be the creepy 50 something who insists on leaning over the counter and whispering things in my ear and whispering to the girl who may or may not have FAS that you'd like to take her on a date. That'll cause me to close down my register whenever I see you walk through the door, but it'll make you memorable. You could be the dude who tried to trick me out of $50 by trying to get weird change. Or you could do what the majority of people opt for and be a raging bitch.

All this crazy customer interaction tends to drive us targets into using our own language to communicate with the customers and with eachother. For example, me smiling like a crazy person while talking and leaning forward while moving back means "holy shit you're insane and I'm just going to get as far away as possible before you start throwing things oh my god oh my god oh my god where the hell is the manager?" I am including a sample interaction for your convenience.

The Scene:

I am doing a WIC transaction with one of my favorite regular customers. A youngish hispanic lady with 3 little boys. They're quite charming and she's friendly and has the prettiest accent and always gets in my line when she sees me, so I generally just love working with them. There's an older white woman standing in line behind her with a full cart. For those who don't know, WIC is how the government makes sure pregnant women and children under 5 (too young for school lunches) get their basic nutrition needs met. They're just vouchers that get them free eggs, milk, cereal, peanut butter, juice, beans, and cheese. You can also get formula. The problem is that our local office is crazy strict about what exactly you can get. You can only get ONE size of eggs, a certain type of cheese, a specific size jar of peanut butter and everything only applies to certain brands. The office just decided that the women can no longer get extra large eggs and have to get the large ones. This is a rather recent development, so on this occasion I had to send a bagger out to get the right size eggs for my customer. It's worth noting that I was already in a pissy mood and was an hour late for my break at this time. Favorite Customer and Mega Bitch were my last two customers before I could leave.

Mega Bitch: WHAT exactly is taking so long?

Me: I had to send him to get her eggs. It'll just be a moment. (translation: shut up, you stupid bitch)

Mega Bitch: And you can't just ring her up?

Me: ...no. (translation: I COULD tell you about how WIC works, but you'd probably complain about the government giving freebies to Mexicans, so just go fuck off now)

Mega Bitch continues to fume, I finish up with my customer and send her on her way. I then finish up Mega Bitch's order and she realizes her coupons are missing. I then smile and feel gleeful while she spends more time than she had to waste waiting for the eggs to show up digging around her witch's bag looking for her coupons and then one was from a different store and another was expired. Hehehehe. Karma!

I was planning on telling about BigTall and "eyes up" but this entry got out of hand, so that will have to wait for tomorrow or later.

Stay sparkly.