Oh yes. I worked retail for over a decade, and now I work in parts. The amount of people that can’t follow directions or read is mine boggling.

I have one client whose purchasing department has one guy. Most of the time he cannot send a correct dollar amount on the purchase order, no matter how many times I tell him “hey, line 2 needs to be $146.76, you have it priced at $257.32.” he will send me an updated PO, but change a different items price and not the one I told him to change.

We normally have to go back and forth 3-6 times. It’s been like this for YEARS. Dude just isn’t good with numbers and he is in charge of purchasing for a billion dollar company.

I’ve worked with some mentally challenged people in the past and through customer service. I’d much rather deal with someone with limited reasoning skills than someone who is genuinely intelligent. Intelligent people fail to see their own limitations and don’t know when to be humble. Some of the dumbest people on this planet are academics, top of their field, highly educated. Those people don’t know shit about anything because they’re hyper focused on one teeny tiny aspect of the universe. At least the mentally challenged know that they have limited reasoning skills and are fairly skilled at asking for help and knowing their limitations.

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 met a good deal of people with intellectual disabilities in the past. Few of them were a bit difficult, but most of them were innocent and very authentic. Frankly, that authenticity made it chill to be around them.

Every time I look in the mirror. I do posses a healthy amount of self-loathing though.

I have a few.

They arent necessarily hostile or mean. but there is a definite laziness to their intellect where they get super insecure if even minor challenged and refuse to admit to any learning disability or any level disability (and look down on those with a disability) and they believe because they are older = know everything.

One took it upon herself to explain walking poles to me…and i didnt even ask. Mainly because she requires to be explained to how to use basic functions of a toaster. So she believes she is at the intellect of everyone else around her by asserting herself to explain how to use even most basic of things only a very young child would struggle with and entirely gives up if the task entirely if it has any complexity. Such as just checking oil in the car. A stick in a hole. this is too hard apparently.

At first i thought she was just acting stupid like some women famously do this where they dampen their intellect around others but living around this person ive come to suspect a learning disability she refuses to accept about herself.

• Corrects people’s pronounciation constantly incorrectly without anyone even asking her and sees this as ‘helping’
• nods along agreeing but not listening to what she has agreed to.
• also laughs at things that are tragic stories because shes not listening or even looking. just tuned right out and i guess laughing is her basic npc response.
• doesnt have an emergency response and relies on other people’s response. number of times ive had to rush to a problem someone has like a neighbor yelling then she shows up later after relying on my response. but then lacks ability to think through the issue and act. i will just do, she nods along. then she will be like ‘I’ll always be there for them’ while shit just happens around her.
• has been in danger. hasnt responded to it. other people got her out of the problem and she just stands there and later tells the story like she had it entirely under control and calls others who would be worried as ‘overeacting’ or anxious.
• thinks things ‘always work out’ without having a plan.
• will get on a suspicious elevator without pre thought. elevator will break. will goofily say she should have listened to someone after calling them worried prior beforehand.
• not using basic observation to know when she has been around someone dangerous and just wants to lazily believe everyone else has her personal safety as their main interest. calls this ‘believing in the best in everyone’
• thinks everything from the store is ‘safe’ and will not harm her to excuse any executive decisions as a consumer(believing its the capitalist who is responsible and magiclly culpable to do their homework and have her personally in mind to keep her safe)

A true dunning kreuger if i ever saw one.

Meanwhile she would give you the shirt off her back.

met a lot of these type in a conservative country town but occassionally i will run into one in the city.

i think the trouble comes from them thinking if having a learning disability means inlovable. which is in many ways sad and just really mean against those who have owned it and worked on their’s.

What part of tech are you in? If you interact with end-users ever, they’re everywhere.

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

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. One person in particular comes to mind - very nice guy, but has some obvious learning disabilities. He mispronounces words very often and mistates stuff frequently (a lot of ‘hims is’, that kind of thing). He doesn’t seem to have much of an inner life, though perhaps its more that he doesn’t have the facility with language to express himself well. He also doesn’t seem to understand a lot of things that people around him talk about.

But he’s a kind dude - frankly, that’s the important bit imo.

Most of the other folks I’ve met and considered dumb were seen only for limited duration and in specific contexts. They might indeed be, on the whole, dumb. But I’ve always felt those small interactions aren’t enough evidence of that - after all, I’ve met objectively brilliant people that, in certain contexts, have done phenomenally dumb things. Heck, we all do (or rather, I sure as fuck have).

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.

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.

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.

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.