Thursday, March 20, 2014

I Respect Awful Jokes

A buddy of mine is receiving a presidential award as an outstanding early-career scientists. You know what else he's outstanding at? Coming up with jokes about dead babies.

On a separate note, I had a horrible, prolonged period early in my career in program management where I was miserably understaffed. The company was working to hire an assistant or two for me, but the process was dragging on. At some point in a fit of desperation, I stopped looking for the perfect candidate and told personnel that I was changing my hiring criteria to "warm and breathing." I was starting to lose a lot of revenue due to the lack of help, and I figured just about anyone could be trained to do the work I needed done (creating package inserts and marketing materials, overseeing product orders and quality control). Soon after I lowered my standards, TF came into my office for an interview. She had a reasonable resume, but more notably, she was *boring.* She dressed well and liked movies... and nothing else. I was excited. I figured I had a drone who didn't have much going for her but a job, which I figured would give her a second thing to talk about in the future.

TF lasted about three exciting weeks. Things I taught her in that time include:
- "You're going to have to learn that 'cert' means 'certificate,' and 'bro' means 'brochure.'"
- "If you don't know if the printer's done with the job, please call him."
- "Um, 'cert' means 'certificate.'"

The point of this posting is that I've noticed a strong correlation between capability and crassness. Among the ten smartest people I've known, probably nine fall into the category of, "I better make sure my kid's asleep before we start talking." And of the ten dumbest people I've known, probably nine fall into the category of, "We'll, he's polite." I suppose you can be smart and polite, but the combination's rare, and for better or worse, I've developed a rule of thumb that might boil down to crass=smart. Sorry, polite people!

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