Wednesday, March 29, 2006

People you can only take in small doses

I am a people person. The evidence is obvious. I'm gregarious, a shameless flirt, I have friends from all walks of life and I work in a profession where I deal with many different kinds of people every day, and I love it.

However, there are certain people in the world you can only stand in EXTREMELY small doeses. For whatever reason (and it varies from person to person) being in the presence of these people for more than a modicum of time can cause everything from nausea vomiting and hives to a pronounced foul mood--or just make your good day a bad one.

What makes it worse is that these kind of people tend to gravitate towards each other and form groups-- so that they can inflict duress on innocent victims at levels that should be considered akin to criminal corruption.

Case in point-- a particular group of ladies that I have the dubious pleasure of being in graduate school with. These ladies have formed a tight knit circle and had the nerve to give their group one of the most obnoxious names possible (more on that later). While there are members of this group whom I find to be lovely individuals, once they join their herd, it is difficult to tell them apart from their perpetually annoying 'friends'. Therefore, for all intensive purposes, I will be dealing with all of them with the same amount of venom. Sorry ladies, but you are called on the carpet for being "Accessories to Extreme Annoyance."

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present for your condemnation-- The Super 7.

I'm mad that they have the nerve to call themselves "The Super 7." I am sure that it started off innocently and they thought it was cute ('There's seven of us and its pretty super that we are all friends...') but the name seems to have given them carte blanche to be-- well-- irritatingly self- righteous. They seem to think they are the only "normal" ones in our class and and confer a "lackof social skills" judgement upon other people. Apparently, they feel they have cornered the market on being 'the All American Girl' (cue: VOMIT). I recall sitting in class next to one of them during our final presentations and I happened to glance at her laptop. She had the nerve to start ripping another student's presentation to shreds (this person she was criticizing also happens to be someone in the class I am quite friendly with). Then she got up and do her presentation-- I must say, I had to stretch my mind to see the relevance of her selected topic to the class material we had spent the previous 10 weeks covering.

Another one who I am going to call "Her Royal Shallowness" ripped into another girl in the class on her blog (Curse you MySpace!-- Blogging for the WEAK) about not having social skills. Now mind you, "HRS" is quite possibly one of the most shallow, materialistic and generally unpleasant people you will ever meet. When I first encountered her, I thought I had met a kindred spirit when I saw her Coach bag and Kate Spade (faux?) shoes. But then I realized, unlike myself, she has an almost (self admitted) unhealthy obsession with expensive accessories. I like to purchase a nice Coach or Balenciaga (or both) every once in a while , but she's taking it to "Paris Hilton" levels... and I can only assume she has "Paris Hilton" cash to back it up-- or she shops on Canal Street. Otherwise she's got the most fucked up credit in the world.

The rest of them, I don't have an exceptional amount of experience with due to the fact that (thankfully) I've managed to avoid the madness. And like my above disclaimer, some of them are really nice people... ON THEIR OWN. However, the majority of the members of the "Super 7" have managed to say something that "rubs the wrong way" at least once in my presence. And by "rubs the wrong way"I mean that less tolerant people (especially less tolerant African American, Latino and Asian people) would find these comments offensive.

Oh.... did I forget to mention the fact that they are seven privileged WHITE women? Who are completing their Master of Public Health? A career field that leads you to professions where you work mainly with marginalized minority groups who have an inherent distrust of the establishment? I'm sure that they feel so very good about the fact that they are doing an MPH so that they can have a "fulfilling" career and "give back to the community"*snicker* (Damn, I can't say that with a straight face!) -- looking good while do-gooding, I suppose.

Aside: If I hear one more privileged, spoiled little asshole use the phrase "give back to the community" ONE MORE TIME....


I am by no means saying their motives are not pure or that they don't have the best of intentions-- they very well may genuinely give a crap about people besides themselves. What I am saying is that their constant stream of self righteous, judgemental bullshit needs to stop-- and soon.

They could benefit from a serious attitude adjustment. Their future careers depend on it. God forbid I end up working with one or more of them after we graduate, and they are still the same people that they are now. They don't want me to dress them down... they'll find out real quick how "abnormal"I can be and "lack social sklls"-- when I get GHETTO up in there.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's high school all over again.