I got some for you.

I used to work in the computer lab of a public library. I’ve met so many people carrying such a profound lack of basic understanding or reasoning skills, that the most terrifying thought was realizing “They drove here.”

I put up with that job way too long… It was… So deeply soul sucking I’m still recovering years later. I wish I were joking.

A lot of people who simply didn’t read anything presented to them on a screen, couldn’t handle the concept of email, and had no idea how to open Microsoft Word, much less type a resume. That was kinda the bread and butter there, unfortunately, but we did our best.

It was a whole lot of “That sounds hard. Do it for me?” And they found all sorts of weasle ways to need constant babysitting without crossing the line of my job description.

Few wanted to actually learn anything. (If they did, I went above and beyond.) They mostly wanted a free butler to do their homework assigned by the government or a lawyer or their job or whatever.

These people are dumb by choice, because they are intellectually lazy.

“Monke, stop being mean to the 85 year olds!” You might be thinking. No. These were like 40 and 50 year olds who would tell me “I’m old school, I don’t do computers.” Computers were around since way before me! Where the heck were you!?!? (I’m now convinced whenever people say “old school” they mean “no school.”)

Some examples:

We used to put big obvious “Out of Order” signs over the screens if a machine wasn’t working correctly. I watched a young lady in like her 20s, sit down at that machine, make eye contact with me, see the sign, flip it over, attempt to sign in, then walk up to me to say (yes, in fluent English) it wasn’t working.

I had a regular patron always looking for pastry chef jobs. We had to keep her resume, email address, and password on our work machine because she’d show up every week having forgotten all of it. She ended up with one pastry job only to get fired for eating one from a tray on shift.

So she applied to a grocery chain I think (with significant hand holding by a number of staff), and they had one of those basic competency tests like giving correct change and “Click the picture that shows how many apples are left if we had 5 and take 2 away.”

I explained the nature of the question but that I couldn’t do the thinking for her, and I shit you not this woman in like her early 50’s broke down upset that it was all too much to handle. Like, first grade math. She was one who drove there, by the way. In a car.

I had a dude get grouchy with me because I told him he couldn’t edit videos with PowerPoint (there was no video editing software on those machines.)

I had people more than once try to get me to help them use Paint or GIMP to alter a scan of a pay stub. (FAT CHANCE!)

They would often try to call customer service reps and hand us the phone. Another huge no.

And these people all showed up to blame their struggles…On me.

…Yeah, I’ve met people that have made me weep for the species. They have zero curiosity, zero intrinsic understanding or critical thinking or pattern recognition, and they are seemingly content only knowing how to just complain and buy things.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste. And I have seen quite a few wasted minds. It really does break my heart.

Edit: Still work for the library, but in a MUCH better position now. I’m still sad the the weirdest most unhinged people I meet usually want the computer lab though, and I hurt for my colleagues over there…

I’ve worked with a couple people who were slow learners and didn’t seem to think very well. Everyone I’ve known like that thought they were smarter than everyone else and never stopped talking about how stupid other people are.

Man, I had an IQ test tell me 145 or some similar score. I still struggle with simple things like with laundry, cleaning and cooking. I’ve never had my drivers license because driving is fucking hard. I flunked my bachelor’s degree twice before finally getting it.

Dumb is relative and situational. That being said, nowadays I’d probably be diagnosed with some form of autism and / or ADHD.

Yes, I met a few in hs, they were always baked out of their minds, and when they weren’t, had zero brain processing

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I teach industrial electronics at a community college. We get a wide spectrum of students, many are average students, some upper 10% absorb information like a sponge and i barely have to teach them anything, then there’s the lower 10% who are so clueless and confused that you don’t understand how they arrived to class on their own (assuming they didn’t literally have help from somebody). They can barely count, they don’t know what fractions are, they can’t keep papers and handouts organized, they have horrible spatial reasoning, etc. The sad part is they know how bad they are… even if you’re a dummy, you’re but clueless about it, especially when you see the other 15 people in a class who ate learning and progressing to the next thing yet you cannot grasp the items being presented. These people are still on problem number 2 after 15 minutes when others are already done with the whole first page. Anyway what always happens is I’ll drag them through the classwork but they do horrible on quizzes and exams, muddle through with a C average (which really means you don’t understand the content), then they usually wash out during the 3rd or 4th semester. It’s very predictable during their very first classes but hey it’s not my job to profile people even if it’s a guarantee 🤷‍♂️

Yes, when I was doing community college theatre there were two guys - best friends - who were the dumbest fucking idiots I’ve ever encountered in the wild. It was years before Dumb and Dumber came out or I would have called them that. Really good natured, happy-go-lucky guys. but they didn’t have six brain cells between them. Over the few months I knew them their friendship fell apart when Moron A beat up Moron B for getting him fired from Taco Bell where they both worked. I can no longer remember any specific stories about dumb things they did, cuz it was decades ago, only that it was always hard to explain anything to them, and I wasn’t the only person who had this problem. They seemed normal in social situations, not like they were mentally impaired or high or anything, just not much going on under the hood.

Yes.

Ran into a person in a random discussion about hand sanitizer. This was well before covid. They completely believed that having clean looking hands was better than having dirty hands. IOW if you’re a mechanic and can’t quite get all the crud out from under your nails but had scrubbed you hands with cleaners and soap as best you could that this was far worse than not washing your hands all day.

No amount of reason would penetrate this stance.

I mean, it’s not like they carry a sign. Some actual mental handicaps can sort of get through the day with some supports. So, maybe you’re just not looking hard enough. If you’re going IQ you should use <85 or something, too, since <100 is literally half of the population.

On top of that, it’s really hard to tell between weird behavior because they’re dumb, they’re not really paying attention or they’re neuroatypical/mentally ill. I have better stories about supposedly intelligent people missing obvious things. (I star in many)

Anyone here thinking that they’ve never met a dumb person probably IS the dumb person lol

Wait haven’t you ever had to go to like, the DMV or a Walmart, or a CVS at 11pm? I’m not saying the professions are filled with dummies but the cross section of public you encounter there is sure to have a few dummies.

Plenty

So, I am normally very skeptical about people yelling about bubbles…but I went from working in IT like you to working blue collar, and thus essentially went from being mildly smarter than most of my coworkers to being very obviously the smartest in the room barring infrequent encounters with others like me.

There are folks around me in blue collar work that are very experienced at what they do and wise in that specific niche due to their experience, but in general my overall mental capacity seems quicker and more flexible than most individuals I meet now, which wasn’t showcased nearly as much when I was with other nerds in IT.

So yes, you’re in a bubble. I had also been in a bubble for many years and had forgotten WHY I had fled to IT and nerd shit, and got a pretty pointed reminder.

Yes, I have visited the United States of America, thank you for asking