Competent people
Sometimes I wonder if I really am somehow more competent than almost everybody else … I usually conclude I’m just conveniently forgetting my own mistakes or else the specific person I’m comparing myself to really is just less competent than most. Like the other day when I got a call from a co-working explaining he was at a users computer, logged on as them, and getting a message that they did not have permissions to run the program… “Do they have write permissions to the program folder and the registry key?”
“Well… I haven’t checked… I’m logged on as them right now… so I can’t see permissions… do you think I should log on so I can check that?” The ellipsis (…) are to show how slowly the man talks… each ellipsis is a long pause… during which, I’m pulling out my hair, because my phone is ringing, I have phone messages I haven’t had time to check yet, and I have people (plural) waiting in my office to speak with me. Keep in mind, this person makes more money per hour than I do, and after getting a permissions error message from a Windows application, he hasn’t bothered to check or test any Windows permissions.
Even people I do think are usually competent, sometimes I have to start pulling my hair out over… I’ve got a big project right now, but I’ve also got about 10 other pretty big projects that I can’t let slide. So sometimes a group of us are working on the big project and I get called away to work on something else. When I get back, some problem we had been having is suddenly solved. “So, we know what that problem was?” I ask the people present at the solution… “We know how to get around that in the future?” They assure me they have everything under control… until we try to do the same thing again… where I manage to not yell at these people (I thought I was being big, even though I knew I just wanted to bitch out), until I manage to figure out how to make it work (so much for them being responsible for this part). Naturally, after I had my light from the heavens and made the problems disappear, we discovered other problems with someone else’s work. *Still not going to bitch out.*
I know it isn’t actually this bad, but sometimes it really seems like anything I’m trusting other people to do falls apart. When something I am doing falls apart, it’s almost always someone else who specifically did something they should not have. If I screw something up (cause, it’s not like I don’t make mistakes sometimes), I always seem to see them faster (and/or ask for a second opinion faster), than anyone else.
I’d really like to know people who can actually do that they say they can do.
“Well… I haven’t checked… I’m logged on as them right now… so I can’t see permissions… do you think I should log on so I can check that?” The ellipsis (…) are to show how slowly the man talks… each ellipsis is a long pause… during which, I’m pulling out my hair, because my phone is ringing, I have phone messages I haven’t had time to check yet, and I have people (plural) waiting in my office to speak with me. Keep in mind, this person makes more money per hour than I do, and after getting a permissions error message from a Windows application, he hasn’t bothered to check or test any Windows permissions.
Even people I do think are usually competent, sometimes I have to start pulling my hair out over… I’ve got a big project right now, but I’ve also got about 10 other pretty big projects that I can’t let slide. So sometimes a group of us are working on the big project and I get called away to work on something else. When I get back, some problem we had been having is suddenly solved. “So, we know what that problem was?” I ask the people present at the solution… “We know how to get around that in the future?” They assure me they have everything under control… until we try to do the same thing again… where I manage to not yell at these people (I thought I was being big, even though I knew I just wanted to bitch out), until I manage to figure out how to make it work (so much for them being responsible for this part). Naturally, after I had my light from the heavens and made the problems disappear, we discovered other problems with someone else’s work. *Still not going to bitch out.*
I know it isn’t actually this bad, but sometimes it really seems like anything I’m trusting other people to do falls apart. When something I am doing falls apart, it’s almost always someone else who specifically did something they should not have. If I screw something up (cause, it’s not like I don’t make mistakes sometimes), I always seem to see them faster (and/or ask for a second opinion faster), than anyone else.
I’d really like to know people who can actually do that they say they can do.
posted by Tam @ 9:21 PM
3 Comments:
At August 13, 2009 11:27 PM,
Anonymous said…
wow your a fuckwit how didn't know someone could be that much of a loser but u just proved it. get a fucking life and stop ctitisising other people just cause ur life sucks shit.
At October 27, 2009 6:19 PM,
Anonymous said…
Haha. I'm gonna ignore that last comment... it's a little out there, no?
Anyway, people aren't equal, and everyone makes mistakes. Some more than others and all that, and some people just aren't "cut out" for the things they do. In a big world like this, it's a little natural to feel how you do. Plenty of people do, even the ones you feel are are less competent than yourself. It's all in perspective I suppose.
I know it doesn't really answer your question, but that's just how it goes. We can't understand others simply because we aren't them.
At May 30, 2011 9:18 AM,
Phileosophos said…
Definitely found that post entertaining too. I've had similar situations. Like the time a woman in the office kept bugging me to help her log in to her sales-tracking software, Telemagic, because it was "freezing" at startup.
Which meant it was putting a prompt on the screen that said "Rebuild magic index? (Y/N)". Somehow I could not get it through to her that all you had to do was press one of the two keys. No, she'd come and bug me like clockwork.
I can't speak for others but if I tell you I can do something, it's because I can.
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