In my incredibly important role as an executive assistant, I have to talk to a lot of really retarded people (none of which is my boss, I’d like to emphasize, in case he ever reads this). But none of these is more retarded than the IT telemarketer. This is the guy who never EVER bothers to look up the name of the IT manager at your location but just calls and casually tells you–obviously on speakerphone, because his legs are kicked up on his desk and he’s busy practicing his old frat’s secret handshake–to connect him to whoever happens to be the head of your IT department. Having a superiority complex and an intense desire to lose my job over something stupid like being snotty to salesmen, I make absolutely no effort to mask the loathing in my voice from these cretins.
HOWEVER, I just received a call from one at an NYC company called Axispoint and was uncharacteristically nice to him, simply because I was coming off a delicious chicken meatball lunch and had really enjoyed IMing Dr. Boyfriend about being excited to “warm up my ‘balls” all morning long. But as soon as I uncharacteristically nicely told this guy that we don’t even keep an IT department at our location–particularly ironic since we’re a software company–he just went and HUNG UP ON ME.
Can you believe it? I am the one who hangs up on people. I am underpaid one who has to talk to retards all day. I have a singsong voice that demands telemarketers to stay on the line longer. But not this guy.
I checked my call log, and of course I have his number from my caller ID. So what should I do with it?
Maybe you weren’t affected by this, since you’re obviously not some midwestern fashion victim who’d be caught dead in Crocs, but I’m not embarrassed to say that I bought the Athens last year on a whim at one of the retail kiosks in Grand Central, and it turned out to be the most incredible footwear purchase of my life. Yeah, they’re too clunky to wear with skirts, but they look fine with jeans, and my feet feel like they’re on clouds when I’m in them.
HOWEVER, soon after I fell in love with my Crocs, I heard some talk of people building up static and getting shocked while in them, especially at hospitals. But since I make it a point to avoid the sick and the frail, I went right on wearing mine. Later, I heard about people having problems with them getting stuck in escalators but assumed it was a myth until Dr. Boyfriend and I trudged up a stopped escalator at Port Authority and saw that the reason it had halted was
a stuck croc!
A child’s Croc, no less. But as luck would have it, I’m not a complete retard and will continue to wear my Crocs flip-flops with abandon. ‘Cause if they’re good enough for G.W. Bush and an oddly pigeon-toed Nicholson, they’re good enough for me.
Stella Zotis is totally my favourite designer on this season’s “Project Runway”.
Not because I’m into her aging rocker clothes or anything but because of this:
Of course she’s from Queens, right?
I’m too lazy to download, convert, and trim the clip myself, but I also highly recommend this video at 3 minutes, 13 seconds in:
I’m not sure I’ve liked a single thing she’s sewn so far, but I sure do hope she keeps getting passed through to the next rounds based on her personality alone.
Growing up, my best friend Tracey and I had another friend whose little sister had Down Syndrome, so while the rest of our classmates heartily enjoyed using the word retarded to describe everything and everyone in sight, we were chastised every time it accidentally escaped our lips. And so like every child who’s told over and over again that she’s not allowed to do something she really wants to, we grew up getting a lot of pleasure from secretly saying the word behind our friend’s back.
Now that we’re a little more mature and our vocabularies are a little less limited, we don’t need that word anymore, but Tracey still loves to entertain me by sending me links to things like Down Syndrome Dolls, which soooooooooo creepily look like this:
And Downi Creations, which (even more creepily?) look like this:
When I saw how cheap the first ones are, I was like, “OMG, I could totally afford to fill my entire house with those things and then invite unassuming friends over! It’s totally worse than being a cat lady!” My co-worker Nathan said, “Don’t you think that’s bad karma?” I said, “Listen, I’ve been making fun of disabled people all my life, and I’ve done pretty well so far.”
Please note that my birthday is October 9th and that a girl doesn’t soon forget a present such as this.
I'm Katie, a farmgirl originally from Ohio who moved to NYC in 2005 for no apparent reason. I like vintage-looking things that are actually new, filagree everything, people who don't make me feel awkward, meaning it when I say "no sleep till Brooklyn", and not trying too hard.
