The Video Of The Incident At Yankee Candle Does Not Define Me
Consider the hundreds of other times I left Yankee Candle with my pants intact.
By our very nature, humans are complicated. No one is entirely good or evil. A person’s essence, who they are, can’t be distilled down to a forty-second viral video of a man arguing with a Yankee Candle cashier before accidentally setting his own pants on fire. The video does not capture who I am because it lacks context. You don’t see what happened before the incident, and the video conveniently cuts off before I apologized to everyone, which I would’ve done had the camera kept rolling.
They say “Character is what you do when no one is watching.” Ipso facto, since, according to YouTube, over 40 million people were watching, the incident cannot be representative of my character.
There are plenty of other videos that better express who I am. Everyone retweets the video of me burning my own pants off, but when video surfaces of me helping an old woman across the street, no one retweets it; they just enter the video into evidence and tell me I have to pay for her new hip and the damage to the vehicle.
Take a second and ask yourself, “If this was my father, would I retweet this video with a caption like ‘doofus’?” If the answer is no, you wouldn’t retweet that about your own father, please contact me so I can have you explain to my son Kevin why you wouldn’t do that.
I messed up, but you have to take the good with the bad; such is the duality of man. Just because I’m the type of person who would yell at a teenage cashier and, in so doing, light my own pants on fire doesn’t mean I can’t also be a loving, attentive father. (There are other things preventing that.)
When I meet people I try to avoid talk of “the video.” Instead, I try to strike up conversations that showcase my capacity for existential thinking. “Does free will exist?” I ask, hoping to kick off a discussion of the higher forms; but their response is always the same: “Were you not wearing underwear, or did the underwear burn off with the pants?”
I’d love to talk about historical fiction, indie rock bands, French cinema, really anything other than my meltdown (no pun intended) at Yankee Candle (exception: I legally can’t talk about my involvement in the May 2nd incident where a toilet in the mall bathroom “became overwhelmed” until the trial is over).
“What should I bring to the party?” I often ask, hoping for the chance to transition from “Yankee Candle Guy” to “the guy who makes great tapas.” Only for them to respond, “How about an extra pair of pants since my wife keeps a couple of scented candles on the credenza?”
Deep down I’m a good person. I can’t change the past, but I can learn from my mistakes. Believe me, I wish I could go back and just agree to disagree with the cashier about whether or not the candle really smelled like “Flowers In The Sun.” I’d love to tell my past self to just cut my losses and strip the pants off once the fire first started instead of trying to extinguish the fire from the inside via urine. More than anything, I wish I could tell myself to not, under any circumstances, pass gas in a manner that causes the flames to flare up in an, admittedly, extremely comical manner.
Unfortunately I can’t change any of those things, but I can change who I’ll be going forward. I’m taking anger management classes. I’ve begun telling people I’m giving money to charity. I’ve even started mentoring children in spite of my busy schedule and court orders.
My whole point is, in that video you’re only seeing me on the worst day of my life. I am so much more. I’m a great worker, loyal employee, and tremendous friend. I’m proficient in Microsoft Office. I’ve been cleared of all wrongdoing for screaming “fire” in a crowd since I was actually on fire at the time (separate incident). And, most of all, I got your company trending on Twitter without asking for so much as a dollar. And that is why I believe I am the perfect candidate for the Social Media Director position at Yankee Candle.
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