Become Resilient To Bungling Fools
In every office there is the bungling fool. That person who is blind to their horrifying faults, processes zero people skills and has the ability to make everyone’s life exceptionally miserable at least once a week.
These people learn to hide behind a wall of excuses and the boss, until finally someone wakes up and boots their useless ass out the door.
At one company an extremely horrible person made everyone’s lives miserable except for the office pervert, who spent every lunch hovering over her. In the end she ended up with the job I had interviewed for at IBM. That accelerating my own career change, as not only had I lost out on a great job, I was incorporating her entire work load. So I quit (but only when a great package was available). I’m not THAT dumb. This was many years ago, and a lesson well learned.
At another company a girl would snap her fingers at you instead of calling you over by name. Seriously?
It’s not that they don’t work hard, it’s that they don’t understand what is truly important for the company. Often, they posses that amazing ability to shine a light on the trivial tasks they accomplish like they are saving humanity itself. In the meantime the foundation is crumbling and everyone has to chip in because this person essentially brings a ROI (return on investment) of … zero.
What to do? The first thing is to not get caught up in their web of lies and let them slowly sink themselves. I’ve only seen one fool survive a company somehow. Most leave on their own accord. The rest were all fired. Or let go – as we say these days.
Another tactic is to copy word for word their clumsy excuses and expose them to all. This is like being the wiki leaks of the office. If something should take 2 days but will take a month (or a year in some cases) then forward exactly why there is a delay as per their multiple lame excuses.
- I’m too busy
- The boss has me on a special assignment
- I was never trained
- It’s not my job
- I was on vacation
- I’m going on vacation
- I lost the file
- My laptop makes a scary buzzing sound whenever I open it
The last tactic is to take them head on, but this may end up with broken bones on your part, as they will find a way to discredit your reputation through effective lying to the boss.
The beat advice is to not get emotionally caught up in their world of blindness and excuses. Do your own work well and sooner or later they will be exposed for the bungling fool they really are.
We hope.
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Tags: blind spot, excuses, fool, incompetent, office idiot