Random List of Dumb Things I Recently Heard About
This week has been chaotic for me. You know how it is when things don’t go as expected—it can be harrowing. We all find comfort in standard regularity, in its many forms. Anyway, despite the twists and turns that the week threw at me, I am able to take solace in the comfort that somethings remain constant. For example, stupid things that range from absurd to entertaining to bizarre. Hearing these stories from clients and from the media kept me grounded and sane, and reassured me that entropy is temporary, and that equilibrium is coming.
My client told me that she recently returned to work following 6 weeks of disability after having surgery. She logged into her email and had 10,000 new messages. She promptly logged off and went to take a nap. 10K messages? Really?!?! 10K is either a form you file with the SEC or something that involves running shoes and a bottle of water. 10K emails is absurd and inefficient. I would have deleted all of them and assumed that if I missed anything important, it would be brought to my attention. After all, “I must have missed it while I was OUT ON DISABILITY” is a reasonable response.
I listened to a podcast in which a business leader extolled remote work. Said it has been awesome, his employees love it, and it’s literally been a lifesaver during the pandemic. Noted that there has been an increase in productivity since March! He went on to say that once restrictions are lifted, it will be business as usual and everyone will go back to working primarily out of the office because “that encourages collaboration and drives efficiency.” After just explaining why working remotely achieved better results….insert HUGE eye roll.
Elon Musk. I know a lot of you have a weird business bromance with him, but my dude is off the rails. Last week he tweeted in his most prosaic way, that “pronouns suck.” The guy who named his son X AE A-XII has a problem using pronouns. Because it’s such a burden to address people using their preferred pronoun. See eye roll above.
Heard a story about someone’s manager who needed a plumber to fix an urgent issue. Manager asked the plumber to describe the “best practices [he] employed and what his success rate was with other customers.” Yeah. I totally ask my plumber to describe his best practices about SOMETHING ABOUT WHICH I KNOW NOTHING while a pipe is leaking all over the place.
The ongoing phenomenon in which someone contracts a professional for expert advice and then questions that expert’s methods and knowledge. Like, if your dentist tells you that you need a crown, do you say, “How about we do a cleaning instead? You know, my brother in-law had a cleaning instead of a crown and it worked for him.”
Invasive and ridiculous preemployment background checks. This one is not new, but it’s one that just won’t die. I have a client who recently had an offer rescinded after the company did its background check. You might assume that my client had a criminal background, or had falsified information on his resume. You would be wrong. He filed for personal bankruptcy in 2015, as a result of his son’s medical bills. Apparently, his son’s pediatric CANCER means that my client is irresponsible and not trustworthy.
Zoom madness. I have heard from countless people that, since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, that literally every minute of their days are blocked with conference calls and online meetings. There is an obvious uptick in the volume of such, even though numerous studies and scholarship prove that most meetings impede productivity.
The client who quit her job because her boss mandated that masks NOT be worn and that employees who did wear them would be penalized. I am overwhelmed by this example of logic and critical thinking. Mercy.
Unpaid interns. This is still A Thing. Why?
As if commercial flight isn’t bad enough already, I just read about this guy, who used the overhead light to heat his leftover pizza. Yes, this is from June, but I just learned about it this week, which is why it closes out my list of Dumb Things.
