Michael and Dwight throw a football back and forth in the bullpen, acting like this bit of business makes the incredibly banal conversation they're having seem more dramatic. When all it does is end up knocking a bunch of shit off Jim's desk. "Can we not?" he begs, annoyed. Michael blathers about needing to be free to think, and demonstrates with a wild throw that nearly pins Kevin to his file cabinet. Kevin neatly returns it, and when Michael tries to send it to Oscar, Jim intercepts it and it becomes a game of keep-away. Jim tosses it to Phyllis, who gives it to Creed, who hands it to Ryan, who suddenly gets fucking plowed over by Dwight. Everyone, even Michael, watches in horror as Dwight rampages through the office, flattening Creed and then Stanley. Finally, panting, Dwight returns the ball to Michael. There's this shocked silence; everyone is acting like a bomb just went off, pausing to make sure everyone's okay. And then Michael screams, "PAM!" and sends the ball flying again.

Dwight is currently annoying Jim by noisily shopping online for electronic goodies and mocking his deskmate for winning the ninth-place prize of a Cugino's pizza. "Question: do their pizzas play DVDs?" Jim THs that as the company's top salesman of the year, Dwight wins some money and gets to go to a convention. "It is literally the highest honor that a northeastern Pennsylvania-based mid-sized paper-company regional salesman can attain," Jim says. "So." Spoken like the guy who didn't win.

Later, in the break room, Pam is giving him some more friendly mocking on that very subject. Phyllis comes in, oblivious to Jim's presence, and excitedly asks to see pictures of Pam's wedding dress. Pam puts it off, and Jim takes his leave. Pam THs that "people" can get weird about wedding stuff, and she doesn't want to offend "...Angela." Good thing that's not true, because not offending Angela sounds like a full-time job.

Dwight sits at his desk, lowering a big bunch of grapes into his mouth like he's Caligula or something. This wordless display is enough to score a "That's what she said" from an entering Michael, who asks if Dwight's ready for his speech at the convention. Dwight isn't too worried, because he doesn't think the speech is a big deal. "Biggest of your life," Michael corrects.

Michael THs that he gave the speech himself himself, two years in a row. He shows us his 1996 plaque and his 1997 certificate. "They stopped making plaques that year," he explains.

Dwight is in Michael's office, brainstorming for his speech. Michael shoots down Dwight's idea of an "extended thank you" and tells him that the sales people will expect to be entertained. Dwight gives us a little character insight into himself in a TH, as he tells us about the time in the grade-school spelling bee when he misspelled "failure" in the final round. Back in Michael's office, he says he can't do it. So here's how Michael builds up Dwight's confidence: "That's because you're incapable of doing it, because you don't know how, because you have no skills." Well, I think that's a speech right there. Dwight abjectly begs Michael to teach him, but Michael says he only has enough time to teach Dwight enough to avoid embarrassing Michael or the company. But who's going to teach Michael?