Working With People Who Are Bad At ... Everything

"People who are bad at..... everything", probably think the same thing about people who think they know everything.

Throw another tire on the fire for me!

I continue to get the strong impression active thought is not on their daily 'to do' list.

Contrary to what you may believe I am considered to be a pretty good listener. The problem is when I go to listen and all I hear is nonsensical drivel I tend to have a hard time keeping interest.

It's much like reading the postings from AP's here. You believe there will be a grain of knowledge in there given the intended purpose but dang more often than not it just makes you regret having not walked away instead.

I don't doubt that you can listen. If the person doing the talking is saying something worth listening to.

Otherwise, your eyes glaze over and your mind wanders off to somewhere else if you're like me.

"Contrary to what you may believe I am considered to be a pretty good listener. The problem is when I go to listen and all I hear is nonsensical drivel I tend to have a hard time keeping interest. "

That's common to ALL good listeners; they can't stand nonsensical drivel because they're actually trying to LISTEN to it and parse it. Poor listeners can but up with nonsense all day long, because to them whatever ANYONE says is just 'background noise,' like that radio somewhere in the back of the garage bay.

"It's much like reading the postings from AP's here. You believe there will be a grain of knowledge in there given the intended purpose but dang more often than not it just makes you regret having not walked away instead. "

Yeah, it's better when the AP's know they're being irrelevant and off topic and use the mask to make a jokelet⁽¹⁾ to lighten the mood.

Notes:

1. As in, "Oh, that was like a joke, but smaller."

Hey! I resemble that remark!

The Ex and I hit that wall all the time.

According to her I was a bad listener. According to me she was a bad talker.

I can't follow a thought pattern that plays like both a skipping record and a CD on random shuffle at the same time.

Same stuff over and over but yet never repeated in the same pattern to give it any solid overall context.

Keeping 20 balls in the air while trying to sort random junk mail into 20 x 20 compartment grid is beyond my language and logic centers working capacity.

Mine starts talking to me (usually with the TV volume full up while she has the remote, but it is something I became interested in watching), expects me to hear the subliminal speech at high frequency in my bad ear that is turned facing her, as I am facing the TV.

After I either minimally react to the sound or ignore her altogether, the fuse is lit.

Then she speaks haltingly, only a few words at a time, with long pauses no one dares to interject a word during these pauses. Not even the barking dogs.

I have to be careful as of late... I was watching TV,.. I think its was a football game, some how she thinks this is a great time to talk. I tuned her out and ending up agreeing to do something just to turn her yapper off.

Within a week, she asked if I got it done, my response was "Huh?" Her response was, "You promised".

So now, if I'm not listening, I don't respond or if I don't I just let her know, I'm not listening.

But Lyn, there is a difference between those that think they know everything, and people who actually do know everything! Just ask my wife, actually don't ask her, please, don't ask her.

Something like: "If a man alone in the woods speaks, and his wife cannot hear him, is he still wrong?"

In spades.

If not no-trumps.

He is even more wronger. How dare he go the woods without her

Sound like my Ex.

The house would burn down around her before she went with me for walk by by god if I went without asking her to come there was hell to be caught when I got back.

True dat.

Especially considering the woods are in Ruidoso, NM, and we are in Lubbock, freaking, Texas.

"...the LEFT SIDE of the bell curve." = my new societal slogan!

" LEFT SIDE of the bell curve" better known as Trump supporters...? Oops, is that considered political, or just a statement on society in general? There are a lot of people that only care about being part of the crowd, the herd mentality....Ahh to be young and ignorant, no responsibility, no cares.....concerned only with the appearance of being politically correct, and sensational headlines your guiding principal...All lead by some super PAC funded politico working undercover as a brother.....Let them blow off some steam, their effect is becoming less and less...

Given the choice this cycle, I am forced to support Trump, because I cannot endure 4 much 8 more years of having to hear, "Clinton this, and Clinton that".

At least with Trump in office, it will be the most exciting time in American History, or I am reading this all wrong. So much will be happening on a daily basis, we will not even come close to keeping up.

Besides I want to see the engineer for Trump's wall figure out how to put it smack dab in the middle of the Rio Grande (and keep it there), since the river meanders wildly in some places. With a wall like that, only the most intelligent, and elite athletic Mexicans, and Central Americans will get in, so more power to the wall.

You have to consider that at his level of wealth there isn't much that he can't have done that for us the practicality and cost would be an impossibility.

Put a foundation under that wall that is 10 feet wide and 100+ feet deep and that wall will stand just fine right in the middle of a river that's only inches to a few feet deep.

I think I agree with you, but the contrary argument is that the river is the border and it moves. Does this mean that the border will be fixed by the wall? What about areas where the river is not a river but is a lake, such as Amistad, or Eagle Pass Lake? I understand those waters to be pretty doggone deep.

I believe the wall, may not be entirely a physical wall, and may just include things like enhanced surveillance, balloons, drones, trip sensors, etc. I still want to see the embodiment of this idea take shape. It should be interesting.

Trump will commission the army corps of engineers to reroute the river.

I cannot believe any rational individual, given the mountains of evidence and the deluge of daily insults and idiocy spewed by Trump could possibly bring themselves to vote for that maniac.

Trump will make the USA the laughing stock of the free world, if he doesn't outright destroy it.

Note to Admin: I did not start this. _(one)

The u.s. is already the laughing stock of the free world. You can thank Obama for that.

Eight years ago you almost couldn't find an African American anywhere that didn't think he was the next best thing to sliced bread.

Now they are clamoring all over each other to be on the newest political hack news program.

Of course, we could all vote for the other maniac, ya, the pathological one.

Now that's where you can find mountains of evidence.

Disclaimer: I did not start this one either.

Well, Which would you rather have? The maniac that has proven that he can manage money and business, doesn't get bullied around and likes to fire people who don't do what they were hired to do running country or'

have the half wit hack that cant say two words without lying and has proven that she can't run water downhill without failing at it in charge?

Our country is in trouble and we are at the point that just maybe we do need a half crazy nut who has as much distrust of the government as the rest of us running the street sweeper for once

Out of everyone running for president he is obviously the one who scares the pinheads in washington the most and that's who I will put my vote behind.

I've read a number of articles and related things regarding that and from what I got from it they got largely what they deserved for not meeting the contract specs.

I dare say it relates to the very topic of this thread. Contractors world wide are notorious for trying to cheat on their work and way too many get away with it because they are the bigger guy and can bully a customer with legal action threats whether it's warranted or not.

The problem with Trump is he's a bigger better rooted bully than they are so he can slap them right back, and a lot harder if need be, for crappy work that did not meet contract specs.

More than likely some good guys did get shafted but then when you working in a profession that's largely seen to be full of arrogant lying corner cutting crooks people tend to assume you're one too.

It's like the local school project I've referred to. Almost every time any screw up is found the first thing the head company people do is blame the sub contractor.

"Oh it's not our fault. The subcontractor did it wrong. Not us.."

Well aren't you ultimately responsible for making sure the work the people you subcontracted your work out to do did it right and met the contractual specs before you signed off on it being acceptable to present to your customer?

"Um... We want our lawyer."

If it was a rare thing yea. But to be honest, I doubt one single person here could say they have never heard or witnessed that example or worse first had though where they work or for themselves or through a direct close associate.

Also, I absolutely detest it when the company insists on going forward with a big project (new generating unit), and they do not make a turn key project. Last one was balance of plant, and OMG the stuff that was jacked up.

"but then when you working in a profession that's largely seen to be full of arrogant lying corner cutting crooks people tend to assume you're one too."

Trump has entered politics, a profession that's largely full of politicians, and you're surprised that people are assuming that he's as crooked as the institution he's trying to be part of?

My whole opinion of Trump, pre-political ambition was "Rich blowhard who's too cheap to pay for a decent haircut." That was it, nothing more. During the primaries, my opinion morphed into "Rich blowhard with a bad haircut and cheap spray-on tan who's playing at being a political candidate for a joke."

I was certain he'd lose the primary, and either go off to pout, or else run third party, declaring that 'loyalty oath' to be null and void due to trumped up reasons⁽¹⁾. If he ran third party, then he's split the Republican vote and hand the Oval Office to the Democrats.

After he WON the GOP primary, the joke stopped being funny⁽²⁾, and his open racism, blatant misogyny, and ignorance of, or utter disdain for, international law made me see hip as He Who Must Be Stopped At All Cost. He's twice called ('indirectly') for the assassination of a fellow candidate, and his idea to kill the families of terrorists⁽³⁾ is the literal definition of a War Crime: targeting civilian noncombatants for death.

The revelation of his past and current political spending in this election have provided a foundation for an alternate theory about Trump's plans; that he's trying to LOSE the election so that his campaign spending won't be closely scrutinized. He's been using Decision 2016 to funnel GOP money into his personal coffers⁽⁴⁾.

Notes:

1. Pun unintentional.
2. "Because it would be hilarious if he won" is one of the WORST reasons to vote for someone.
3. I'm not sure if he's using the term to mean 'proven terrorists' who have killed people, 'convicted terrorists' who have not succeeded in any terrorist plot, but were declared a terrorist y a court of law, or 'suspected terrorist,' meaning any Muslim, person of Arabic descent, or anyone Trump doesn't like.
4. I call this scam "Bialistock and Bloom" after the two characters who tried to use the Worst Play Ever to embezzle money from the production unnoticed.

RODFLMFAO, RTFM, and crying all at the same time. My feelers are hurt.

I am so done with politics anyway, and I stopped contributing my hardly earned money to the scoundrels who constantly were nagging me on the phone for more money.

I don't trust women to be rational leaders, but I never worked for one, other than wifey, and she is a lunatic I was looking for. I like and appreciate women, I just don't trust that particular woman, especially given the crook she is married to. I think I should stop there, as this could turn ugly.

I worked with one that was my boss, it wasn't that bad.

I just did the work, at times against what she wanted (unknowningly of course). She got promoted twice because of it, she got all the credit, and of course she brought me along.

I didn't mind it, I was paid well, and it shielded me from the office politics. But when I gave my notice, she came close to a nervous break down

Well there you go, I expect the joy was just too much for her to take.

lol,..

well,... some days working with her, it was like the pin was pulled on a hand grenade, and your trying to get the pin back in but your hand is shaking too much.

I like that analogy. Wifey always has the pin pulled by the time I get home, even with gifts and food. My best option is immediately take the 4 barking, jumping dogs outside, sit down, and smoke.

My Ex was from the middle east region and very much of their mentality of 'Detonate before negotiate.' on any topic she felt could be taken to be confrontational and many that were clearly not.

"Im hungry. Lets go out and eat."

Okay. Where do you want to go?

"I don't know."

Well what do you feel like having?

"I don't know. why don't you decide."

Well, it was your idea plus I have stuff to finish in the shop tonight and the leftovers in the fridge are good enough for me so since you want to go to town you need to decide where you want to go and what you want to eat. I'll go and I will pay but you have to decide.

BOOM!

hey, my girlfriend its goes like this, "remember, we're going out to eat tonight so don't ruin your appetite."

So, I'd get busy, miss lunch, 2:30 roles around and I am starving, blood sugar is all kiddywompus but I am starving and can't wait.

She gets on her ipad or goes to bed and I ask, aren't we going out tonight?

Her response,: "ohhh, I'm too tired. "

From now on, when I'm hungry, I eat.

Played that game with the Ex to darn near starvation too.

Top of my list was calling me at work in the winter on her day off because she is stuck in the ditch.

Why are you in the ditch?

"Well you see I was on my way to town to buy something, Cant recall now but it was damn important, and there was this guy driving real slow so I had to pass him and that's when the car spun out and went in the ditch. Totally not my fault."

What was the guy in front of you driving?

"Oh. A big 4WD pickup just like yours!"

Isn't this the same story you had for the last three times I had to take off from work and come and get you? When big 4WD pickups are driving slow doesn't it seem reasonable that maybe the roads are slippery and maybe you should drive as slow as them too?

BOOM!

I drive the car, girlfriend drives the $WD in the winter.

She a pretty good, alright, acceptable. Her only issue for her is flat tires, She called me twice for that, onetime at 1:30 in the morning (when she was working the grave yard shift at the post office hub)

Then I find out she had AAA that she used for the first time about 2 weeks ago.

Does she say: "I keel U", then go boom (figuratively).

My all time favorite, well, "Bill" didn't do it that way...Bill being the pervert preacher she married first, and was cheating on her from essentially day one. All the time (when not scouring my soul), it's "Bill did this, Bill did that", and "I am writing down all these memories about Bill." I know more about that guy than I do my own self, it ain't pretty, and I want to choke the life living sh*@ out of him if he ever shows up on my doorstep.

Speaking of being bad at everything, I think I am really, really bad at being married.

There was always the smell of explosives in the air and faint clicking of a detonator button. I jest never knew when when was going to connect the wires and it's not like me to ever leave loose wires dangling.

There was no ther to compare me to but there was always the opinions of others who confirmed her beliefs even though she could never put a single name, place or association to any of them. I was pretty sure they were just the voices in her head but that didn't make them or their opinions and agreements less real to her.

I was bad at being married. I tried to use logic and rational thinking.

It created many irreconcilable communication problems.

I didn't know what she was talking about and neither did she but since she started the discussion that made her opinion more right than mine. I disagreed.

After 2-3 rounds of OK, dammit, I will open a freaking can of beans, I go out and get Fuddrucker's or something.

Been there, still wearing the bloody T-shirt (mine, not hers).

yah, well you shouldn't have been asking for it, she said

I have always said, it really doesn't matter that you are towards the end of the Bell curve. What really matters is which end! :-P

I'm thinking it's not a bell curve but an exponential decay function?

I blame it all on television...

Human intelligence before (black) and after (red) the invention of television.

I'd blame it on the internet...

I blame it on natural variation!

I guess management did fundamentally changed America. We've become a country of citizens of 'its someone else's fault'. All in less then 8 years. What a shame.

The thing I am referring to happened in 1998-1999. We are still correcting the mistakes that were made now in 2016. And our generating capacity for our system has done nothing but decrease in this time, while the system capacity (due to tie-lines) has trended upward steadily with a growing urban population here.

Several times this summer, during the 100+ degree days of summer, I witnessed the SCADA showing an all-time record load, and 3 of 4 ties in "max load limit" alarm.

But why are they pretending to belong on the right side?

They should be in advanced elementary basket weaving class right now.

I have to believe that there isn't a person that's bad at everything. They're just in the wrong job. Maybe they'd just need to be a bartender or something.

WOW! I can relate to that business mentality way too well.

Sounds exactly like too many jobs I have had in my life.

Show the least bit of competence and you and everyone like you is out the door the next day.

It was either sacrifice your integrity, conform and get laid off months later, or you address the issue and get let go.

I was pissed, but my integrity was intact. And it turned out for the best.

They shouldn't be a bartender if they are bad at it. You are right, you could always just reframe the situation by re-labeling their shortcomings as skills at the opposite...can't see that really helping a lot.

There really are people whose highest and best use is as the main actor in an ongoing cautionary tale. Unfortunately the job openings and wages available for a 'bad example' deter most from doing what suites them best.

Then there is the bewildering hords of people who feel extremely passionate about something yet when questioned about it it becomes very clear they have done absolutely zero research or study of said passion to the point they are largely wrong about what their whole basis of their beliefs is founded on.

Hey, HEY. Reading other people's opinions online and then repeating them back to others as your own counts.

I put the blame squarely on a few things. Data availability and Technology advancement exceeding humanities ability to currently cope with it, and the state of the education system.

When there is soooooooooooooooooooooooo much information available now with the internet is it any wonder we have all got a bit lazy. "I don't need to learn that, I'll just use a calculator" has become the all incompasing "I don't need to learn that, I'll just use the internet"

We won't lose our planet to a Skynet Terminator uprising and nuclear war, it will be to AI's taking over and manipulating the internet which we rely on as we do the need for food, clothing, shelter and oxygen.

I can understand the not being able to cope with it all but the not being able to even grasp the actual true concept of what it is you so proudly support is what bewilders me.

What bewilders me is when I meet someone who gets on to a subject the feel as strongly about as I do yet when asked what should be simple basic question it becomes immediately clear that they have no clue about what they are talking about.

As an avid and experienced electronics/electrical technician and hobbyist I have a pretty good grasp of the fundamental of my interest so for me trying to have a rational discussion about electronics with someone who's every answer is either '555 timer IC' or 9 volt battery based even when it clear that neither of those things have anything to do with the actual problem or discussion leaves me frustrated and with great difficulty on how to cope with the experience.

Thenif that wasn't bewildering enough when they are asked about an actual 555 timer IC and 9 volt battery related topic they can't even answer that either.

------------------------------

"How do you calculate the RC time constant for a 555 timer IC?"

Well first off you make sure your 9 volt battery is fully charged then I plug the timer into it.

"Okay. I didn't ask about the battery and my timer is powered by a 12 volt DC power pack. I asked about the RC constant calculation."

Well obviously your timer won't work with a dead battery will it?

"Huh? That's not even remotely related to the question I asked and I am not using a battery. I asked about the RC time constant. Nothing else."

Duh, obviously you can't make the timer go without a battery can you and if you're plugging it into a wall outlet it going to explode. It should be obvious to someone like you who knows so much about electronics shouldn't it?.

"WTF? I didn't ask anything about power related issues. Why are you going about that and not answering my question? "

Really? You know so little about 555 timer ICs that you don't know they won't work with a dead battery or AC power. What kind of electrical engineer are you? Are you even one?

"..................... WTF? When/how did this become a question of my credentials and experience? "

-------------------------------------------------

It's those types of conversations day in and day out that are wearing me down.

It goes without saying that a little knowledge is dangerous in the wrong hands.

Your experience is quite sad, because although calculating the RC time constant of a 555 timer is rather complex (ie- depends and varies on a number of different factors) this information is clearly indicated in the (generally) 555's wonderfully written datasheet (including graphs).

I had a similar experience with an Engineering graduate, my simple question on a practical real-world problem and request for a solution was met with the answer "we first model it", my response was a few simple steps and the job is done. This was more a lack of real-world experience and University teaching focusing on theoretical modelling rather than practical work however. That and I knew what University he came from and set him up with the real-world based question knowing what he would say.

It wasn't really about a 555 timer but to be fair I hang out on a few other forums of which two are electronics and to be fair the guys who have the mentality of the 555 timer IC example character some days are a dime a dozen.

More to the point it was about how basic applied statistical analysis works when dealing with complex real life conditions that have huge ranges and variables and the guy having absolutely no clue how to follow what I was asking or how to give me anything but a single data point (average mean value he himself could not answer as to how it was derived, but by god it represented the whole of the world though) he is convinced accurately represents the whole of the complex system being despite the fact that when the data sets are looked at in any other statistical method the data sets show a completely different trends and significance than he proclaims to be based on his one and only single numerical value.

That and having dealt with an unusually high number of trolls this last week (as one was seen here in CR4 in a thread I started just to call him out) as well that claim to be educated and experienced in certain fields I am very familiar with who could not give me or anyone else one shred of evidence that they supposedly had worked in said field for decades let alone had the slightest clue what they were talking about.

So this conversation took place at a Radio Shack store, didn't it?

I can't buy anything there, they don't try to sell me a whole blister pack of batteries, then the wifey tells me they don't work, because the remote is not functioning correctly.

I take it from her hand, put the batteries in the right way (if they didn't already discharge from being cross-installed), and then point the IR thingy at the TV and press the button. It generally works.

My 555 timers require multiplication to get the right answer, am I wrong?

"My 555 timers require multiplication to get the right answer, am I wrong?"

Yes your wrong. 555 timers just go on and off. They cant multiply anything. You Need a calculator for that? And, Really? you don't know the difference between a 555 timer and a calculator? Do you even know what electronics is?

That's how that conversation would likely continue and no matter what you ask or how you phase it you're still wrong and stupid and they are not.

God have mercy! Good thing I am using PWM on Arduino boards now, if I even knew how that works, but I assume one has to adjust the voltage input that is used to calculate the pulse width in the program. I am a total novice at speaking Arduino, so things are going a bit rough.

Welcome to the Brave New World!!! And N,o you aren't alone here.