I once worked with a woman - P who, well, she was kind. None too bright. Would do as asked, but never came up with any way to do more. Would disappear for hours, then when assigned to a room would claim she needed to eat her lunch first. I was talking with her about Basic Training, and that I'd never, personally, gotten dropped for push-ups as a correction, only in groups. She laughed and said she got dropped every day. And I believed her. In every platoon there is one who is, frankly, dumb. The one in mine, we all theorized, was fetal alcohol/drug damaged as a baby. P would have outshone her, but no doubt was the goat of her platoon. When I met her, she was older, and probably had always been a rather plain woman. I grew, over time, to like her a great deal. If not to enjoy working with her. Since we were hired around the same time, and our general physical descriptions were similar, we were often called each others names for the first year or so. That wore off in time. Really bothered me, because while I will accept the label of Plain, I was not like P otherwise.
Today I had to work with a young woman who is physically pretty, very made-up and polished, flirty in the extreme... and otherwise very much like P. Insisted on calling a Hewson instrument (she'd apparently never seen it written down) a Houston. Repeatedly, insistently and with great assurance. She watched several minutes of the Travel Channel before she came around to the idea that maybe the Befeathered samba dancers in gold body paint might be at Carnival. Most of the brake screechingly ignorant comments from her I cannot believe were actually said, making them impossible to remember.
I have learned to be calm, patient, and kind to her. As well as to prepare myself to work twice as hard to keep everything running smoothly. Even when she decides I'm the one who needs help. As she went to get the possible implants, and only brought the odd numbered sizes. Why? Because they were the ones across the top row. Even though they were just outside the room, we were only going to need one, and I intended to just get the one when it was requested.
She may be only a 25 watt bulb, but getting impatient isn't going to bring up the lumin. If I can't manage, it's my failing, and speaks only about my failure as a human being. Better to do my best with low light than to curse the darkness.
6 comments:
(o)
Yes, we have to work with what we have!
I am leaving a stone to show that I was here
It's one that I picked up from a beach in Brittany
It's grey and round and slightly rough, not at all like the polished pebbles one usually finds on the beach
It's the kind of stone that people usually overlook
I suspect that it is like me
Dale,
And I have to work with my own, impatient and critical self.
Mouse,
Oh, those are my favorites!
Oh, how interesting! I was smiling with recognition and remembering particular collegues in the past... when suddenly I realised that, whilst I have colleagues now with whom I get annoyed for all sorts of reasons, it's never - here in the very elite university -because they're not intelligent. Damaged, psychotic, unkind, insecure, catastrophically absent minded (and god knows, as they would no doubt tell you, I'm all of those at times, too), but no one is unintelligent. Weird feeling when something entirely obvious occurs to you for the first time.
I've been fortunate that I haven't ever had to deal with someone as dim as you describe in this post. Mind you, perhaps I am the dim one and I don't know it.
Phil,
Categorically not possible. Of anyone who reads here. I tend to repel many kinds of people, but the fools especially don't suffer me any more gladly than I do them.
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