The transition from college kid to self-sufficient adult is difficult one to say the least. The college kid has a few important-ish concerns: pass all classes and try not to drunk text that frat star from the Beta Christmas party. As self-sufficient adult, on the other hand, you have far more to keep on your radar in order to ensure survival. This of course includes keeping a steady source of income to pay for food and shelter, as well as your addiction to Seamless pad Thai and unfortunate habit of buying the whole bar a round of Fireball shots on every Friday night.
Yet, in the face of confusion during this monumental transition, Blake, Adam, and Ders are here to provide you with the wisdom and survival skills for the Real World. These are just a few of the lessons they taught you over the last six years that prepared you for the hard days of a twenty-something Millennial.
The only way to avoid a hangover is to keep drinking.
#Tbt to the morning after Tequila Tuesday where your "***Flawless” ringtone wakes you up to remind you that you have a 10 a.m. class and that you’re a dysfunctional human being for sleeping on the floor next to your bed and using a large pizza that you don’t remember ordering as your pillow. At this point you have two options: brave an hour of class before returning to your bed for a three hour nap and telling anyone who asks that you’re trying out a new Pizza-Patron perfume that studies say improve productivity in young adults OR email your professor saying that you got food poisoning from the ER cafeteria chicken salad sandwich after you spent the night in the hospital with your roommate who had a sudden case of appendicitis.
Fast-forward to real life where those options are a no-go. You wake up from a happy hour with coworkers that ended at 5 a.m. at a strip club and have thirty minutes to make it to a 9:00 a.m. meeting with the whole office without a soul noticing that you are indeed still wasted. Easy enough. But you’re all too aware of the inevitable terror coming your way at approximately 10:15 a.m.: the delayed hangover and 6.75 hours of faux productivity that you must find some way to execute. The only way to avoid this horror is to continue said alcohol consumption, as Blake Henderson and Adam DeMamp so famously conclude as they race back to the office to delete their angry, drunk voicemails on their boss's phone. Herein lies your new two options: do you A. Put on the best show of your life of sobriety while miserably hungover and craving all the fried food in the tri-state area OR B. Put on the best show of your life of sobriety while more than moderately tipsy, masking your vodka stench with 7,000 mints of various flavors from Duane Reade and Glade Clean Linen air freshener you stole from the janitor's cart.
Whether or not you’re bold enough to execute option B, you’d be lying if it didn’t cross your mind the morning after the far too lit season premier of The Bachelor. S/o to three for $10 bottles of Merlot at CVS and your lack of self-control.
The strict culture of the corporate world may get in the way of important family traditions like the Tour de Franzia and Half-Christmas.
Half-Christmas has always been the happiest time of year for your favorite TelAmeriCorp employees. Until, of course, Alice bans the celebration from the office. It’s not unlike the time you were assigned a huge project the weekend of your niece’s christening. Or when you were forced to stay late on the night of the divorce party for the girl you met at your gym last week’s boyfriend’s cousin. And worst of all, when your boss refused to recognize the holy day that is September 26 – Jared Leto’s three-quarter birthday and official appreciation day, founded by you and your roommates one hungover Sunday morning when you watched his incredible performance in Requiem For a Dream. Apparently a 30 Seconds to Mars karaoke session and screening of American Psycho, followed by a thoughtful discussion about how Jared would have made a far better Patrick Bateman (with all due respect to the very talented Christian Bale), is an “unproductive use of company time”.
Yet, the three showed us that even in the face of disappointment in the workplace where your job and livelihood is on the line, there is nothing that a good old fashion strike with a keg and your drug dealer’s grilled turkey can’t fix. And if you’re lucky, you might also get a milkshake fountain and No-Bra Fridays out of it too.
Stay financially savvy and save money by taking advantage of all resources at your disposal - aka harvesting any and all break room snacks.
Break room snacks can make or break workplace culture. Their quality and variety have a direct correlation to your overall happiness and outlook on the future of humanity. The days of plain yogurt are bleak and hopeless in comparison to the psychedelic euphoria of a fridge full with Key Lime Crumble and Almond Coco Loco Chobani flips. And you know your life is peaking when some blessed soul brings in half a box of Munchkins from the Partner’s meeting with corporate.
Yet, the best part of break room snacks is that they are free, and thus free for taking. Apples, oranges, and Rold Gold Classic Pretzel Sticks may seem like a subpar meal for your makeshift dinner table as you watch the latest episode of How to Get Away with Murder, but because you spent the last $40 in your bank account on six packs of craft beer for a birthday party your work-wife organized for her corgipoo, you have to find some way to stretch your dollar until payday next Tuesday. But for now, Gary’s wife’s leftover chocolate peanut butter cookies from last night’s PTA meeting is your sustenance for Thursday through Monday.
Blake, Adam, and Ders saw the full value in break room snacks and the ultimate power in having control over Alice’s Costco card to fund assorted popcorn and other wholesale goods for their latest party. It’s genius, really. Also, what better way to bring you back to college than Kirkland vodka you didn't buy?
Your landlord is your worst enemy when you’re behind on rent and he no longer accepts a thirty rack and Family Guy impressions as a form of payment.
Being late on rent is your “signature move”. You have no electricity, and your apartment reeks of backed-up sewage since they turned off your water around the time your cousin Larry and his love affair with Mexican food made a visit to your city. You’ve tried it all, selling nearly all your furniture on Craig’s List, even though roughly ninety percent of it that went to scammers. Including your bedroom door. Never a good way to get on the lord of the land's good side.
It was a close call to eviction from the Workaholic’s Rancho Cucamonga house. Yet, they were blessed with Ben Stiller’s desperation to do just about anything to get enough publicity to keep his Cold Stone Creamery franchise in business. Thus, the moral of the story is that having a local network front-yard wrestling show has a higher chance of success than negotiating with a Nigerian prince spambot.
Birthday’s become less exciting and more painful with each year. The next thing you know, you’re at Dante’s Pizza Palace on your 25th, playing whac-a-mole with 7 year olds, drinking pitchers until 8:00 past noon, and hanging out with strippers in an indoor playground.
Or at least that’s how Ders did it.
He’s right, though. In college, every birthday was one year closer to the big two one and the ceremonial passing down of your poorly made fake IDs to posterity. That was until Taylor Swift made twenty-two great again and wrote your birthday Insta caption for you. Now, every birthday of twenty-three or greater is just a reminder that you’re one year closer to being kicked off your grandpa’s health insurance.
These days, you’re honored when someone other than the TSA agent asks for identification, and you wish more than anything that you live to see a day where Botox is subsidized by Obamacare. The youth have new dances that you don’t have the coordination to learn, and you find yourself having to explain to your sixteen year-old half-cousin what Disney Channel was like in its glory days circa pre-2009.
However, Ders learns an important lesson that birthday. With age comes the opportunity for the achievement of new dreams. At 25, Anders Holmvik is eligible to run for city council, and you finally have access to rent a car from any company you so wish. Only ten more years before either of you can become president and fulfill your promise to Mr. Clark’s fifth grade class to ban homework forever and to make recess mandatory during every class except lunch and snack time. Because God knows in this post-2016 era that anything in politics is possible.
No one said getting older and learning how to provide for yourself was going to be easy; but, the world is a little less stressful when you have access to your ex-boyfriend’s Hulu account and thus the multitude of prudent wisdom from three dudes at a telemarketing company.
