andy. not mickey.

the inner rooney will no longer be quelled...

i'm not going to gloss over anything or filter myself today. and i'm not going to throw in a bunch of goofy, made up adjectives as per the norm. because i want to make this perfectly clear.

i am surrounded by idiots.

you could sit me down and point out how the people who surround me fit almost entirely into the 16-21 year old age bracket and so what do i expect? i might even be tempted to agree with you and quip that although i adore teenagers individually, you have to agree that as a group they're rather stupid (and then you would roll your eyes and say, "why do you always quote that mary poppins song. it's not that funny!... sometimes i think you're the idiot that surrounds me!" and i would probably draw myself up and look down my nose at you and say, "you know, while i adore you individually, as a group you're rather stupid." and you'd start laughing and say, "that doesn't make any sense!" and i'd say, "your mom doesn't make any sense." and then i'd walk out the door, into the night, never to be seen or heard from again and you would have learned an important lesson about how words can be hurtful).
but even if there's some validity to my quippage (hu. well, i went a good two paragraphs before i made up a word and that's got to mean something) and teenagers' idiocy increases exponentially as they increase in numbers and in a twisted example of synergy, their idiocy becomes more than the sum of their parts... ok, then that would mean that idiocy is contagious.
maybe it gets airborn somehow.
i don't know.
but here in my chocolate factory world, there's a particularly vicious strain of idiot going around and the adults are catching it.
yesterday, three representatives from a much more well known chocolate company on the east coast arrived to meet with us. three perfectly intelligent people who after an hour in our factory, and a 5 minute interaction with our 20 year old office manager("i always thought orem, utah was a big city growing up but that was before i'd been to sandy... ya, i guess byu is a party school... no, i didn't go to byu because i didn't want to get married really young... uh hu, i got married last summer!"), degenerated into chris farley. i'm not exaggerating. the last thing one of them said to me as he walked out the door was, "just because it took me 5 or 6 years to graduate from college... lot's of people take that long!"

ya... they're called doctors.

the adults in my life are seriously not doing well lately, but the grand prize of consummate inanity unanimously goes to the owner's 16 year old son. he's worked here for 3 weeks and at first i thought i was having a problem with nepotism. my internal anti-nepotism rant lasted 12 hours. maybe 13. because i'd managed to forget that everyone who works at the factory is somehow related to someone else but i don't have a problem with any of them. besides, i got my job here because of my sister and i really don't have a problem with me. i had to delve deeper into my hatred. the next day he came up to the front office and asked for the key to the soda machine. our little twenty year old office manager asked him if there was a problem with the machine and he looked at her, paused and said, "you don't know who i am, do you. i'm rob's son. now let me have the key to the soda machine."

in a way, i admire his overzealous commitment to art of imbecility. his comments to the people he works with, his utter lack of respect for anyone or anything, his total absence of tact... he's going to be just like dad someday.

i might still be bitter from the time i had to do his science project.

you know, come to think of it, andy rooney would never say any of this.