Office Etiquette: If You Can’t Make Popcorn, Don’t

The last 45 minutes I sit at my personal, office work space with my nose overwhelmed with the smell of burnt microwave popcorn. These are one of the mysteries of how smart people can be so dumb. This isn’t isolated to this office, all the offices I have been a part of have one or more people that are incapable of properly using a microwave to make popcorn.

I have to suffer and smell the stink for hours after. Burnt popcorn has a unique smell when the chemical powder that is the butter flavoring reaches critical mass. It never leaves the air, it hangs out there like a bad project proposal. Never going away, leaving a stink everyone remembers.

It’s not a difficult process to follow the printed instructions on the bag and there is even a ‘Popcorn’ button on the microwave. I assume that the microwave makers added a Popcorn specific button after people at the microwave factory started burning popcorn and the makers said ‘We need to do something about this’.

Even with all the simplicity built into this process that lasts no more than 2 minutes people still screw it up. You really can’t sure stupid.

So here are very easy tips that will ensure your popcorn is cooked properly and your fellow co-workers don’t suffer from your inability to perform proper tasks.

• Use the microwave’s Popcorn button and press start.
• Stand by the microwave observing the popcorn popping process.
• When there is 5 seconds between pops, the popcorn is done. Stop the microwave immediately. Even if there is time left, it’s OK to hit 0:00. 
• You will NEVER hit 100% kernel popped quota, EVER. Don’t try to.
• Remember, observe, 5 seconds between pops, done.

If you push the limits the fragile, white fluffy goodness will quickly scorch to office clearing gas.

Eventually there will be a manager that will get smart (probably not) and look at you and ask this question, “If you can’t pop a simple bag of popcorn, how can you do the job I am paying you for…which is way harder?”

End of Line.
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Binary Blogger

Binary Blogger has spent 20 years in the Information Security space currently providing security solutions and evangelism to clients. From early web application programming, system administration, senior management to enterprise consulting I provide practical security analysis and solutions to help companies and individuals figure out HOW to be secure every day.

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