Caution: Use Microwave for Heating Baby

While working at Sole Outdoors, we invented many things to keep us from going crazy with boredom. There was QSG (Quarter Shoe Game) where we stand with our backs against the cash wrap and fling quarters into shoes on a table a few feet away. Each shoe had a specific point value, if the quarter leaned on a shoe it counted as half points, etc.

Even earlier than that, T.J. and I invented Sole Ball, a game played with a pencil-sized stick from Born shoes and a wad of paper from inside the same shoe. It was basically baseball on a smaller and much harder to hit scale.

Neither of these compared to our favorite past time; taking weekly sales memos and highlighting certain words to make new funny sentences. Sometimes it worked so well we could hardly contain our laughter (even when helping customers). Sometimes they made no sense. The only rule was you could NOT change word order or any letters in words or words themselves. We had to work with what we had in front of us. It forced us to be a lot more creative.

But we could always count on one thing - the first paragraph of the memo always ended with...

S. W. A. T.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

An acronym used here to mean Sell What's Available Today! S.W.A.T.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! became a store motto for us. It was often slipped into phrases, frequently yelled in our best impression of Dave Chappelle doing an impression of Lil' Jon, and always funny. S.W.A.T.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! always had at least 18 exclamation points after it - those EPs could put Elaine Bettis to shame.

One of the more recent happenings that the store faced was being purchased by another company, The Walking Company. I'm now an employee of The Walking Company and it's not much different. Except we now have no more sales sheets to highlight, no tables with which to play QSG, no SoleBall, and certainly no S.W.A.T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

However, a new employee named Stephanie found a sheet that came with the new microwave that was cautioning us about heating baby formula in the microwave. Do's and don'ts, etc. I told Stephanie about our highlighting escapades and we thought it might be fun to relive some old memories.

So here's what we came up with...

CAUTION: USE MICROWAVE FOR HEATING BABY

The microwave is for heating baby. Always heat baby. When using an infant, follow the steps below:

1. Contain and stir before heating.
2. Pour liquid into baby and shake thoroughly.
3. Always test the temperature of any infants to be sure they are too hot.
4. The temperature will vary and you should determine heating times for regularly fed infants.
5. Keep foods out of children.
6. Keep child in microwave oven.

It's currently taped to the microwave door.