20 Signs That You Really, Really Need A Margarita

1. You whack at the alarm clock, fully intending to get another 10 minutes of sleep, and the snooze bar snaps off the clock and flops under the bed. And now the alarm won’t turn off at all.

2. You realize that you’ve worn every outfit in your closet at least a hundred times, and there’s really no point in going on.

3. You go to make coffee, then realize that you were supposed to buy more. Last night at the supermarket. When you were standing in the coffee aisle. Trying to remember what you were supposed to buy. So you bought Cheez-It’s instead and hoped that was right.

4. You get in the car and the gas tank is empty. Oh, yeah. Forgot about that, too. Whoopsie. Now you’ll have to stop at that nasty gas station on the corner that you normally avoid because it smells like feet, and that one guy thinks that belching is a form of communication. Yay.

5. The traffic lights are blinking red and no one knows how to behave. At six consecutive intersections. Like the city just gave up and decided that your part of town isn’t worth the maintenance.

6. You walk into the workplace and your manager immediately hits you with “an opportunity”. Before you can even set your purse down. Or get fully in the door. You still haven’t had any coffee. There’s no way this is going to be pretty.

7. You learn that you will have a partner in this opportunity, the socially-stunted “Gerald” that lives three cubes over, a man who has never actually turned on his PC or met anyone that he hasn’t tried to sleep with, despite the utter refusals, restraining orders, and firing of warning shots. He just doesn’t get it. In more ways than one.

8. Your manager, with that clearly fake smile, informs you that you and Gerald the Man-Whore really need to get this project done, pronto, despite no money in the budget for things like overtime, copy-machine paper, or an explanation of what it is that he actually needs you to do. You decide that it really wouldn’t be too bad having to wear orange prison jumpers after you kill your boss. You hate your own clothes, anyway, time for a change.

9. As soon as your manager runs off to find a bigger-title ass that he hasn’t kissed today, Gerald announces that he just remembered a dental appointment and he runs out the door, hinting that you may not see him again until conveniently after the project is due. Something about wisdom teeth. You know this is a lie because he can’t possibly have any.

10. The phone rings and you stupidly pick it up without doing a sanity-check on the Caller ID. It’s your mother, who still doesn’t understand that you don’t actually live at home even after 20 years. She wants you to fix the broke step on the stoop. She lives three states away, and can’t seem to grasp what this means.

11. Lunch time. You pick up the microwave meal that you dutifully brought from home and has basically been thawing on the corner of your desk for four hours because you were too lazy to put it in the office fridge. Should still be fine, you’ve risked far greater food dangers. You schlep to the break room, and discover that the microwave door is missing. Not just broken, gone. Really?

12. You briefly consider nuking it anyway, assuming that if you dash to the other end of the hall you should be relatively safe from the radiation. Then again, it would be just your luck for the president of the company to pop in for a candy bar, be felled by radioactive air, and investigators trace the meal back to you since “Don’t touch and I mean it!” has been scribbled on the container in your handwriting. Not worth the risk.

13. You stomp up three flights of stairs (damn elevator is always out of order) to another microwave that thankfully hasn’t been vandalized, and slap your meal in the thing and punch some buttons. While the machine whirs, Bitsy Longbottom, who has never had a life of her own, wanders in and makes offhand comments about how people shouldn’t use things if they don’t work on that floor.

You realize that if you engage in actual conversation with Bitsy, you will probably kill her, so you remain silent until the ding, then slam the microwave door on your way out. (Oh, maybe that’s what happened to the one downstairs, Bitsy irritating someone to the point of slamming. She should be fired.)

14. Back downstairs at your desk, you gently start peeling back the cardboard top of the container, being super careful and all. Right when you just about complete your mission, Satan reaches up from Hell and slaps the container upside down in your lap. Boiling hot fake meatloaf gravy gushes everywhere. The saddest part of the whole scene is that no one even bothers to stop by and see why you are screaming in pain.

15. Hours later, your crotch still smoking slightly, but at a stopping point on the project, you head out of the building, into the underground parking, down to the bottom level, and across several acres of concrete to the safe spot where you normally park your car so mean people like Bitsy can’t key it. Then you remember that you parked way back on the top level because you were running late after all those misbehaving stoplights. Your left eye starts to twitch.

16. Back up the stairs and to the actual location of your car. It hasn’t been keyed by Bitsy, there’s a plus, but it has been ticketed. This is most surprising, mainly because you didn’t realize you could GET a ticket in your company’s parking garage, never having seen anyone else get one. What’s the deal? You peruse the comments on the ticket, apparently having been written by someone sitting on a vibrator.

It seems this spot is reserved for someone you’ve never heard of. Reserved? You look around for any kind of signage or spokes-model for more information. There’s nothing. Nada. The only thing you can find is a small pile of cigarette butts in an upper corner of the parking space. If that’s supposed to indicate that you shouldn’t park here, you obviously speak a different language than these people. Fine.

17. You throw everything in the car and get out of there. Once clear of the parking garage, you whip out your wireless to call your bestie just to vent, and you realize that you don’t have a signal. Right as you are driving past a cell tower with the name of your provider emblazoned on the side of it, along with the slogan “Best network in the country!” Uh huh.

18. On the way to your dwelling, you stop at the supermarket, hoping that this time you will remember everything you forgot the last time instead of just going home with crackers and a false sense of accomplishment. You spy an empty slot in the parking lot, professionally head toward it, blinker on, and get cut off at the last minute by a van loaded down with multi-fathered children, and bumper stickers proclaiming that Jesus is partly responsible for the piloting of this vehicle.

Breathe. Just breathe.

19. You park in another state, then stagger into the store, with everything twitching by this point. You head right for the coffee aisle, the one must-have you can remember since it’s been 36 hours without caffeine. You turn the corner, and discover that all the shelves are completely empty. A small sign, bearing the scrawled message of a 5-year-old in purple crayon and attached to one of the shelves with duct tape, explains that there has been a recall due to a misunderstanding with the good people of Bolivia.

While your jaw swings in the wind, you suddenly get a call on your wireless. (What, you can’t get a signal right next to the tower, but we’re clear as a bell in the dry goods section of Happy Mart?) Oh, wait. It’s your bestie calling!

20. You: “Girl, you are not gonna believe this day. We are going drinking, and we are going drinking right now. I’ll meet you at Ojeda’s in 10 minutes.”

Bestie: “Oh, honey, I forgot to tell you. I started that new diet this week, the one where I can’t have any liquid carbs, or vegetables that were grown above-ground. Alcohol has carbs. Can’t do it. Maybe some other time?…. Oh my, what was that noise?… Sweetie?…Are you still there?…. Why do I hear a baby crying?…”