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Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Weekly Contest Winner - Week 4

Congratulations to Tom, our Week 4 winner. Congratulations Tom! Here's his story:

Back in my college days, I had one of the weirdest, most awkward moments I've ever had in my life. We were at a typical college birthday party when my friend who was sober and I, who was a little buzzed, found ourselves hungry and decided to get some burritos at around 11:15pm (nighttime) or so. So we left the birthday party to go to a familiar little taco shop down the street with outdoor seating that we always went to.

It seemed like a typical night, we ordered our food, got our burritos, and found a table to sit down. Then we started eating. After a few minutes of regular chit chat, everything was normal up until this point when all of a sudden out of nowhere, literally out from behind the bushes this short little middle-aged-looking Japanese lady just appears out of nowhere, greets us with a bow and immediately with a very thick Japanese accent, she starts talking about family values and divorce rates in America.

I was thinking "What the heck?" the entire time she was talking as I couldn't understand most of what she was saying because she talked extremely fast and I had a few beers in me.

Apparently, she was from some charity or something called "family 'something' world 'something' federation," I don't remember too clearly. Anyway, after she was done with her three minute speech, she sets this big black briefcase on our table and opened it to show us what looked like jewelry from a local 99 cent store and asked for a donation. It was apparently a donation to help promote world peace.

There was an awkward silence of about 5 seconds, the longest 5 seconds ever. I was still just thinking "what in the hell?!" when I looked at my friend and he had the blankest look on his face that I probably have ever seen on him. Then my friend snapped out of it and said he spent all his cash on his burrito. When she looked at me, I felt the urge to give her a dollar for some reason. Maybe it was because of her effort, I don't know why. I ended up buying the best looking two dollar bracelet she had. After she was done with us, she approached a group of dudes sitting two tables down from us. It was hilarious watching the expressions on their faces. Then she left with some guy in a Honda and saw her go across the street into a local Jack-In-The-Box to do her presentation to the people in there.

I later justified my purchase as a donation helping to promote world peace as well as I was buying a gift for my girlfriend at the time. I gave her both the bracelet and the story of how I acquired the bracelet and it was very well-received.


That particular event that happened that night ranks as one of the strangest most random thing to ever happen to me. I mean who does that at 11:30pm at night?--seriously? and of all places, a tiny little outdoor taco shop?

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Sunday, November 18, 2007

Our Weekly Funny Story Contest Winner for Week 3 - Foiled

Congratulations to Kim Carson, our Week 3 winner! If you're not familiar with our contest, each and every week, we reward one person with a 100 dollar certificate. This goes to the person who submits the funniest gift giving or gift receiving story. Well here's Kim's story:

Ever since I could remember, my brother and I had a deal…

You see, my mother is a very difficult woman to buy gifts for. She will only ever reveal one thing that she wants, and is very specific about that thing. The trouble with this is that there are two children who are looking to get her that one specific gift.

So the deal is this: Whoever finds it and buys it first is safe. His or her gift will be the best loved of the holiday. The other must sweat and scrape and dig and pray for a present that Mom will like almost as much as the specified gift.

One particular Christmas, my mother found a winter coat that she was dying to have under the tree this year. She revealed it’s location, size, color, and make to me. I thought I had the scoop over my brother and headed to the mall the first chance I got.

I parked in the Macy’s lot – a short cut into the part of the mall where the coat was located. I made my way toward the glass entrance doors, a gentleman holding one open for me…until I was close enough to see his face… My brother. There he was. And we saw each other at exactly the same time.

The game was on. He let go of the door, letting it shut in my face, and began to run. I began to run too. We were both only moments away from being best loved this Christmas and it was going to be a photo-finish.

My brother took off towards luggage. I hurried past the shoe department, through women’s lingere, down the escalator, and around the perfume counters toward the entrance of the mall. I could see the window of the shop where the coat was. But I didn’t see my brother. I had beat him!

Suddenly, I heard loud buzzers and little red lights were spinning around. In less then a moment, a Macy’s security guard had his hand on my shoulder.
“You can’t leave with that,” he said sternly, as though I knew exactly what he was talking about. “Do you have anything else in your pockets?”

My pockets? What did he mean?

I looked down at myself and saw that a pair of ladies’ silk underwear had gotten caught on the zipper of my coat, and I had carried it there to the security detectors at the front of the store.

My brother then came running by, disheveled, laughing at my accidental misfortune. I pointed him out to the security guard while explaining my ridiculous story. I showed the guard my pockets and purse and apologized with success…

I didn’t go to jail that day. But my brother had won the race, bought the coat and had it gift wrapped by the time the guard had finished searching my purse. I drove home, beginning to think of another gift I might get for my mother.

Later that night, I got a phone call from my brother… He was in the same position as I was now… After all that, it turns out that my father had purchased the coat two days earlier!

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Monday, November 12, 2007

Weekly Contest Winner Week 2: WORST BIRTHDAY EVER

Congrulations to Kyle Taylor, our week 2 contest winner. Here's his hilarious story:

WORST BIRTHDAY EVER

When I was in the eighth grade, I became old enough for the first birthday when my parents really started to miss the boat on gift giving. Up until this point my parents did pretty well with gifts: a bike, basketball goal, etc… So this year I had no reason to believe the level of gift giving would be any less.



As was typical on birthdays, after everyone got home from school and work the five of us (my two sisters, parents, and I) gathered in the living room. Grandma had given presents to my parents and I started opening those first. To set the stage for this Grandma has always given terrible presents. Presents so dumb you just try to figure out how anyone could think this item could be a gift. This year was no different, but that was as expected. This year I started out with a toffee chocolate candy bar – highlight of all presents and given every year for Christmas and birthdays. Next, I opened up and old shoebox filled with packaging peanuts. As I tore through the box I found the first item, a roll of scotch tape. I gave the quizzical look I gave every year, and continued through the box hoping this year might be different than all the rest. Nope. Item number 2 was a roll of AVON chapstick, with a not attached that said, "Has the yearly calendar on it!" Oh how convenient! If I ever forget what day it is, I can just go to my trusty roll of chapstick, what a lifesaver! After finishing out the box with a standard sticker book, yes at the age of 14, I was still getting sticker books, I moved on to mom and dad's gifts.



Mom hands me the first bag, after opening grandma's gifts I was excited to get something worth opening. I tear it open, and stare. What is it? I COULDN'T EVEN FIGURE OUT WHAT IT WAS. All I could see is that they were black and ninja turtle green foam pads of some sort. I thought maybe they were masks at first, but I wasn't sure. So I turned back to mom and asked, "They're shin guards, for soccer" she replied. To give some background, I lived 6 miles outside a town of 2,000 people in rural Indiana. My school doesn't offer soccer, I've never played soccer, we didn't have cable thus I'd never even seen anyone play soccer on television. As I turned back to my gift something caught my eye, an orange sticker on the top left corner of the packaging. I focused in on it and read "CLEARANCE 75 CENTS." I was so mad and disappointed I just threw them down and left the room, not even opening the rest of my presents, which I got grounded for doing, on my birthday. After this birthday I either handpicked my birthday presents or got money, talk about a step in the right direction. My mother to this day, apologizes for buying such a terrible gift.

Labels: Birthday Gifts, Worst Birthday Ever

by: Executive Gift Shoppe 0 comments

Monday, November 5, 2007

Weekly Contest Winner for Week 1

Congratulations to Julie, our Weekly Contest Winner for week 1! She has won a $100.00 gift certificate to Executive Gift Shoppe!

For details about our weekly contest click here: Weekly Contest

Here is Julies hysterical story:

By the age of twelve, I was a "well-rounded" child-- an early bloomer, to say the least. On the playground, I heard all of the jokes about being Dolly Parton, and, except for that one time I beat up a boy and made him call me uncle, I learned to live with it rather gracefully. By my senior year in high school, in the early 90's, I had learned to hide my assets to some degree. I chose to wear a lot of baggy clothes, and I never left the house without a jacket so that my chest wouldn't draw too much attention.
Of course, my true friends never teased me for being a little top heavy. It never mattered to them. In fact, none of them ever even seemed to notice. In a lot of ways, they were a second family to me. We were such a close-knit group that we spent our school days together, our afternoons practicing in the high school band, and at least one night a week, the four of us would get together at my house to watch our favorite prime time television show. It became a routine for us.
The Christmas of our senior year, the band director decided to let us have a Christmas party at the school. All of the students got to have snacks and exchange gifts with their friends during the first class of the day. My buddies and I were really excited about this. We were prepared with tons of gifts and the knowledge that everybody would get to see the cool presents we got each other. Some of the gifts were comical - a Millie Vanilli spiral notebook was the gag gift I got my best friend, Michelle- but most of the gifts were extremely fitting and thoughtful, the kind of gifts that only true friends would think to get for each other.
I still remember opening the Christmas gift from my buddy, Michelle. Everybody had gathered around to see what we had gotten for each other, and the crowd all seemed curious about the soft red package I was about unwrap. As I removed the gift from the paper, I was surprised and extremely embarrassed at the present my naive friend had given me. Outdoing herself yet again, she had managed to find a form fitting t-shirt featuring the logo of the television show that we had been getting together every week to watch : Twin Peaks.
Nowadays, I would wear it with pride, but, at that moment, when everybody chuckled, got out their cameras and asked me to pose with the shirt, I turned six shades of red.

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