The Art of Reading (& Following) Directions

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not the microwave in question

Monday. I bring my lunch. I'm proud to have brought my lunch. {And in my adorable new lunch box, no less!} This means I won't be spending money! Yay!

I brought one of those chinese food boxes of orange chicken, and I had been craving it all morning. So I go into the little kitchen at work, unwrap the container and then start to read the directions.

The directions that say "Heat wrapped box for 3-4 minutes."

Wrapped box? Seriously? You mean, the wrapper I just took off, I shouldn't have taken off? I should have read the directions first? Is this what you are telling me, little box?

So I figure, okay, no big deal. I'll just put it in there for longer than 3-4 minutes so it has more time to cook.

4 minutes. Still frozen.
3 more minutes. Still frozen.
5 more minutes. STILL frozen.

I decide that since it was supposed to be steamed then maybe I should try to find some tupperware to put it in and quasi-steam it.

4 minutes. Still cold.
4 more minutes. Still cold.
{This is when I should have gotten the hint.}

So this is like 20 minutes or so in the microwave, and I've been going back and forth from my desk, so it's taken well over 30 minutes for my orange chicken to still be frozen.

Then I discover the "Frozen Vegetable" sensor button and figure, okay, this has to help because surely it will just cook it until it knows the veggies are done. So that goes on for about 7 minutes. Then I check it.... put it back in on the frozen veggie button thing...

Now I'm kind of freaking out that SERIOUSLY? 30+ minutes in the microwave and this stuff is still cold/frozen?!

So I throw it away.

And my dear sweet wonderful friend, Lauren, lets me a have a can of her soup so I don't "starve". I go to heat up the soup in the same little upstairs kitchen microwave, go back to my desk to wait, go back in the kitchen to discover room temperature/cold soup, and then I realize:

The microwave is broken.

Tuesday. I bring my lunch. I'm proud to have brought my lunch. And this time, I'm definitely not going to mess it up. I have a frozen pizza thing that only has to cook for like 3 minutes. I read the directions that say to peel back the top but don't pull it completely off because you flip it around and use it as a stand for your pizza {you know what I'm talking about, right?}.

So I put my pizza in to the downstairs microwave for 3.5 minutes and go talk to Heidi and Rachel and laugh about the ridiculous drama that happened the day before. Ha ha ha.. I'm so silly. Ha ha ha - I should have realized the microwave was broken. Ha ha ha.

I go back into the kitchen to get my yummy pizza when I realize that while I read the first part of the directions, I neglected to read the part about taking the plastic wrapper off the pizza.

So it melted.
to.
the.
pizza.

I throw it away and go whine to Heidi and Rachel about how ridiculous I am and how I obviously can't read directions, and now I'm going to Wendy's thankyouverymuch. Instead, Rachel offered me one of her frozen dinners and told me the directions out loud, so I wouldn't have to read them and mess them up.

Rachel: "Well, at least this makes a good blog story."

The end.

P.S. I'm eating out today. Just in case you were wondering.