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Working with stupid people.

lazygal

Have you ever worked with someone who is just stupid? And wondered how they got the job at all? I've had a few different jobs in my time, in the public and private sector, and each time I've come across a colleague who is so blatantly stupid I wonder how they even managed applying for jobs in the first place.

Here's a short list:
The retail manager who couldn't use a printer to print off information signs, she left it all up to me 'because you're a whizz on computers'.
A classroom assistant who misspelled potatoes. Spelled it potatos.
A current colleague who can't (or won't) work with an IT upgrade, so her work has to be edited every time its submitted as its not compatible with everyone else's.
A colleague I have some interaction with (thank goodness not on a daily basis) who works on a switch board and can't transfer people's calls, instead he cuts them off. Every time.

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murraykil

mcmoustache wrote: »

It doesn't really matter what RSA is. The point of the anecdote was that this person didn't think she needed an internet connection to connect to the internet.

In the world of miniaturisation and wireless communication it's a bit harsh to call this stupid; it's more a lack of understanding or knowledge.

D1stant

murraykil wrote: »

In the world of miniaturisation and wireless communication it's a bit harsh to call this stupid; it's more a lack of understanding or knowledge.

Got to disagree. If you have no signal on your phone, most people understand you cant make calls. This is the same

Kaner2004

I work with several stupid people.
And the hilarious thing is that they spend the whole day going on about how inefficient the public sector are or how useless someone else is.

So in a 7.5 hour day we have.
- 1 hour of actual work.
- 2 hours of lunch and breaks.
- 4 hours bashing others and public sector bashing with no actual work going on.
- 1 hour talking about how hard they work themselves.

Icepick

Gee Bag wrote: »

50% of the worlds population are below average intelligence. Try as you might one of them is going to cross your path at some point

That would be under median.

Ouchette

Icepick wrote: »

That would be under median.

Which is a type of average.

(But yeah, 50% or 50%-1 will always be below the median, but the % below the mean would depend on the distribution.)

Pottler

Anyone see that episode of the simpsons where Homer gets a really hardworking, intelligent assistant who has a crap apartment, a crap car and gets crap pay and can't figure out how Homer has a house, car etc being that he is an incompetent slacker?
I think the world of work is a lot like that - I see an awful lot of very bright people working their nuts off, long hours, complicated, skilled jobs, crap pay and masses of pressure.
On the flip side, I see an awful lot of window lickers who have an inflated ego and self worth who get paid a fortune seemingly despite their total incompetence and sheer laziness. It beats me as to why things are like this, but it's almost as if the arrogant, lazy thickies get a kind of "pass" for life. Pay and what's asked off you in return seems to bear more to do with how up your own hole you are and how full of your own unquestionable self worth - wtf is with that?

[Deleted User]

Its a fact that people are promoted to a level of incompetence and then remain there. that's not just the public sector either.

Cantona's Collars

Worked with one guy who didn't know how to use a shovel,he was given a yard brush to sweep up along the side of the trench we were filling-he couldn't use that either.To keep him out of harms way we gave him a stop/go sign,cue scores of irate motorists who narrowly avoided head-on collisions.

Another guy parked up his JCB on Friday and couldn't find it on Monday morning,I lost the plot with him one day and threatened to bury him in a field.

IrishEyes19

you sound so helpful OP, Id love to be the new kid in your office asking for advice :rolleyes:

Teyla Emmagan

zerks wrote: »

Worked with one guy who didn't know how to use a shovel,he was given a yard brush to sweep up along the side of the trench we were filling-he couldn't use that either.To keep him out of harms way we gave him a stop/go sign,cue scores of irate motorists who narrowly avoided head-on collisions.

Another guy parked up his JCB on Friday and couldn't find it on Monday morning,I lost the plot with him one day and threatened to bury him in a field.

Not a work story, but I remember some builders furnishing an apartment and my brother and cousin were sent along to carry mattresses upstairs. Anyway, after about five minutes the cousin was sent out to 'watch for guards' because he was getting in the way he was so useless. Not being smart enough to carry a mattress through a door has to be up there with not being able to use a shovel...

flanders1979

Deleted User wrote: »

Its a fact that people are promoted to a level of incompetence and then remain there. that's not just the public sector either.

Its not what you know, its who you know. A well connected Daddy is better than any qualification in this crooked country.

ResearchWill

Teyla Emmagan wrote: »

Not a work story, but I remember some builders furnishing an apartment and my brother and cousin were sent along to carry mattresses upstairs. Anyway, after about five minutes the cousin was sent out to 'watch for guards' because he was getting in the way he was so useless. Not being smart enough to carry a mattress through a door has to be up there with not being able to use a shovel...

So more than likely he was outside smoking, and still got paid, even though ye did all the work. I know lots of people like that they are not stupid just lazy, and because most people don't like an argument they get away with it.

Knasher

Never experienced it myself, but my coworkers complain about it all the time.

:P

murraykil

D1stant wrote: »

Got to disagree. If you have no signal on your phone, most people understand you cant make calls. This is the same

You disagree but you essentially repeat what I said! Most people will understand and some won't; that does not equate to them being stupid. I would think stupid would be if she expected it to give her the lotto numbers! :pac:

Much less people will understand how an RSA secureID works or what it does. I think it's a bit harsh to call someone with little technical knowledge stupid for expecting the authenticator to give them internet access! The poor woman was probably told that she needs this to connect to the office network from home so I can see how she misunderstood.

lazygal

Pottler wrote: »

Anyone see that episode of the simpsons where Homer gets a really hardworking, intelligent assistant who has a crap apartment, a crap car and gets crap pay and can't figure out how Homer has a house, car etc being that he is an incompetent slacker?
I think the world of work is a lot like that - I see an awful lot of very bright people working their nuts off, long hours, complicated, skilled jobs, crap pay and masses of pressure.
On the flip side, I see an awful lot of window lickers who have an inflated ego and self worth who get paid a fortune seemingly despite their total incompetence and sheer laziness. It beats me as to why things are like this, but it's almost as if the arrogant, lazy thickies get a kind of "pass" for life. Pay and what's asked off you in return seems to bear more to do with how up your own hole you are and how full of your own unquestionable self worth - wtf is with that?

I believe that was one Frank Grimes. RIP.

kieranfitz

I work for stupid people.

weemcd

Stupidity is one of the few things that never ceases to amaze me, every time I think I've heard enough something will come along and blow this notion out of the water completley.

I work with (in a roundabout way) the general public, jesus wept, I hear things almost daily that actually hurt my head and leave me with a furrowed brow. The problem is that while stupidity on its own is a bad enough trait, stupid people tend to have traits of stingyness, ignorance and down right bad manners to go with it. Plebs, bottom feeders, chavs, scum, I don't know what to call them.

wonton

I remember one of my not so smart co workers before said

"i'm gonna pack out the stock for the back wall, because it's the most hereditary thing to do"

me and an other person that was there just looked at each other with the same "did he just fcuking say that ****?" face.

marty1985

Deleted User wrote: »

Its a fact that people are promoted to a level of incompetence and then remain there. that's not just the public sector either.

There's a wiki page for everything!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle

The Peter Principle states that "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence", meaning that employees tend to be promoted until they reach a position in which they cannot work competently. It was formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book The Peter Principle, a humorous [1] treatise, which also introduced the "salutary science of hierarchiology."
The principle holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Eventually they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain, being unable to earn further promotions.

marty1985

lazygal wrote: »

I believe that was one Frank Grimes. RIP.

Or Grimey, as he liked to be known. RIP.

lazygal

weemcd wrote: »

Stupidity is one of the few things that never ceases to amaze me, every time I think I've heard enough something will come along and blow this notion out of the water completley.

I work with (in a roundabout way) the general public, jesus wept, I hear things almost daily that actually hurt my head and leave me with a furrowed brow. The problem is that while stupidity on its own is a bad enough trait, stupid people tend to have traits of stingyness, ignorance and down right bad manners to go with it. Plebs, bottom feeders, chavs, scum, I don't know what to call them.

I enjoy the Cries of Retail thread on Ranting and Raving. I was that soldier. The number one thing I learned is that middle aged women who've never had a job always 'know their rights' which never coincide with the actual consumer law pertaining to them. There are some very, very stupid people who torment retail workers with their idiocy on a regular basis.

Skerries

marty1985 wrote: »

There's a wiki page for everything!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle

I much prefer the Dilbert Principle

marty1985

Skerries wrote: »

I much prefer the Dilbert Principle

Ah, but I much prefer Putt's Law

gigawatt

btw OP potatos is spelled 'potatos' not 'potatoes'. so your classroom assistant was actually in the right. I think George Bush also made that fatal error while visiting a classroom once and it ended up all over the news.

weemcd

lazygal wrote: »

I enjoy the Cries of Retail thread on Ranting and Raving. I was that soldier. The number one thing I learned is that middle aged women who've never had a job always 'know their rights' which never coincide with the actual consumer law pertaining to them. There are some very, very stupid people who torment retail workers with their idiocy on a regular basis.

scenario:

wee: do you have an order number?
pleb: no
wee: do you have an account with *insert name of faceless company*?
pleb: no
wee: ok, ill take a few details and get you setup for an account
* 5 minutes wasted. I try to register the account, of course they are set up with us already and shop twice a week.

/wee slams his head off table giving himself slight brain damage, and another small slice of the soul he is not sure he has anymore fades away...

Gee Bag

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

0-49 below average.
50 average.
51-100 above average.

Also, what I love is the Dunning Kruger effect.
.

The actual figure would be 50% minus 1. I took the liberty of rounding it off.

You really must love the Dunning Kruger effect, is it a code you live by?

Duggys Housemate

Ficheall wrote: »

Aye, that was the 'weighting' I was referring to when I said in my initial post that I wouldn't argue that point. Trying to assign a "number" to the intelligence of an individual is certainly beyond me - even saying one person is "more intelligent" than another is daunting. Theoretically possible though.
I don't think that's where any of the 49%ers were coming from, though. I could be wrong. Perhaps one of them will enlighten us.

Icepick wrote: »

That would be under median.

Intelligence cant really be measured directly, so it assumed to be a normal, or Guassian, distribution. Someone on 140 may be twice as smart as someone on 100, not just 40 % smarter.

But IQ is merely is a mapping of your position in the distribution on the IQ test to a number representing that position, 100 being average, 15 being the standard deviation. They could have picked 500 as average, and 75 as the deviation. Or whatever.

Median and average ( mean) are the same, here.

The 49%ers seem to think that we only every measure 100 people.

[Deleted User]

gigawatt wrote: »

btw OP potatos is spelled 'potatos' not 'potatoes'. so your classroom assistant was actually in the right. I think George Bush also made that fatal error while visiting a classroom once and it ended up all over the news.

It has an "e". Quayle's error was "correcting" potato to potatoe.
And it wasn't fatal

marty1985

bluewolf wrote: »

It has an "e". Quayle's error was "correcting" potato to potatoe.
And it wasn't fatal

The children died.

gigawatt

all through school we were taught that it was 'potatos' so it would seem that every teacher that ever taught me was wrong. I went and looked it up and potatos is the possessive form as in 'this potatos skin looks a bit green' whereas potatoes is the plural. I mixed up George Bush because Dan Quayle was his vice president, it was fatal because it was so absolutely cringeworthy! he'll never live it down!