A few weeks ago, a small, spoiled and overly-groomed creature came tripping into the dealership.

Tripping.

Apparently, the week before her parents had bought her a vehicle worth far more than the median income in the area. What was this momentous occasion? Why, graduating from high school of course! Way too go, sweetie! Maintaining that C- average! Passing high school! Such a accomplishment! And you’re not even knocked up!

As I passed her talking to one of our salespeople, I overheard her say:

“Yes! I’m getting ready to go to college and I want to study business!”

As she says this, she tosses her hair and laughs an annoying sort of bray, like a donkey on crack. And even though she is inside, she is hardly using her inside voice, littering all her sentences with exclamation points. Like! She just won! The lottery! And is giving! Her! Class! Campaign! SPEECH!

“Oh. What do I want to do?! I want to be a pharma… pharma… pharmaceutical rep!” (She bravely pushes herself through a five syllable word!) “Mhm! Yes! They do make lots of money!” And with that, she manages to bray, exclaim and shimmy her boobs in this odd sort of victory dance.

I was just happy she made it through an entire sentence without crying.

I couldn’t help but chuckle. I wanted to walk over to her and say “Honey. Could you do me a favor and say barbiturate? That’s right B-A-R-B-I-T-U-R-A-T-E.”

I have a special place of loathing in my heart for women who want to get into this particular line of business not realizing how much work sales is; women (see: girls) who think they can show some skin and be great at sales. Thus leaving the women who are actually in sales-related jobs to fight the stereotypes and sexual harassment suits. I kind of want to hunt them all down and rip out their ovaries.

But, I digress.

So, I was in my manager’s office telling him this story and we were laughing at it, quite hard I might add. At this moment the salesperson chose to bring her in the office and introduce her to the manager. The manager strikes up friendly conversation with her, asking the same questions and getting the same answers. Then he says “Oh! So when you’re a pharmaceutical rep, you can bring us barbiturates!”

He kept trying to goad her into saying “barbiturates” by asking a few different questions, several different ways. I stood there, trying so very desperately not to laugh, but occasionally, I would let up this sort of strangled choking noise, while repressing the tears of mirth that were rising to my eyes.

Collegiate Barbie is getting more confused by the minute. The laughter, the big words, they are all too much for her. With a very puzzled look on her face she askes:

“Bar–whats?”

I couldn’t resist any longer, so I jumped in and said helpfully “Nothing, dear. Just a fancy word for a bar. You know, jello-shots and beer! The places wherein you find any amount of alcohol reason enough to take your shirt off!”

A look of dawning passed over her face and she started prattling on “…so this one time at band camp…”

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 4th, 2007 at 4:47 and is filed under Sarah S. Thursdays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.