seriously. are you really that dumb?

i spent the week in south jersey at the home office of the company for which i work.

one afternoon, i was talking to our head of collections / credit and our direction of edi. (electronic order transmissions). both should be pretty smart given their jobs. however, i quickly learned that while they may be book smart, they sure as hell don't know anything about american geography.

we were talking about passports. will (collections) mentioned that his passport was about to expire. i told him that he really should renew it now while he doesn't have any international travel planned as it can take up to 12 weeks for a new one. that led into a discussion about the new passport rules re: mexico, canada and the carribean. i commented that the new rules were good for the tourism in puerto rico and the us virgin islands. steve (edi guy) then inquired as to why that would matter. "you need a passport to go to those places too," he stated authoritatively. SERIOUSLY. so i reminded steve that both puerto rico and the us virgin islands are us territories, thereby a us citizen may travel to either place with just an id card / driver's license. it's no different than crossing into new york from new jersey.

if that wasn't bad enough, will said, oh yea, well, what about hawaii? do you need a passport to go there? i shit you not. i kindly reminded will that hawaii is the 50th state, and alaska was the 49th ... just in fucking case.

unbelieveable.