Someone had to say it

Today I finally cracked and told the intern, "Shut up. You don't know what you're talking about." Clearly, I am not management material.

My coworkers are thrilled by this because they think of me as "the nice guy" in the office, and I was the first to snap. Too be fair, though, they didn't have to share a golf cart with the guy during the company golf outing today.

I lasted until the 12th hole. That's when he began telling us the evils of unions. (We had been talking about Bruce Springsteen. I saw his concert last night. It was super.) I let him go on about unions because the client that was part of our team had interupted him to tell us that her father was in a union and big supporter. But did that stop our intern? No. Stay the course. We don't pontificate with the audience we want, we pontificate with the audience we have. I let him go because it's getting to the point that I want him to be fired. However, I did finally step in when he began to sing the praises of my least favorite store (besides the ones where kids can make their own dolls and bears) - a store that rhymes with Mal-Mart. He actually talked about how it symbolizes all that's great about America! Ugh. By this time we were back at our cart and out of earshot from our clients. Luckily, my little talk quieted him down for the rest of the day. My only regret is that I hadn't paraphrazed The Big Lebowski: Shut up, Intern. You're out of your element.