Too Stupid
A fellow temp at my current assignment inspired this post.

"I don't get it."
"What do you mean. All I'm doing is converting the quarter hours to minutes. It's not that hard."

Anyone who is around me for long periods of time knows that I'm not afraid to make judgments on people regarding their intelligence capacity. I realize that these are, for the most part, off-the-cuff remarks that aren't backed up by any real evidence, but I like making them nonetheless. Call it "Lewis Blackitous," if you will. In all my days, though, I've noticed a curious phenomenon that one can encounter in various venues, those people who try, for who knows what reason, to be much more stupid than they necessarily are in reality. Akin to those individuals who feign being tired all the time, these people act dumber than can conceivably be the case. Simple tasks, explanations of simple concepts, as related above, and all manner of simple interactions become harrowing ordeals that baffle the minds of this breed of creature.

The above fragments of conversation came from an episode yesterday in which I was trying to add up my time for the last week for the purpose of submitting my timesheet. This timesheet equates fifteen minute intervals into quarter-hours, so fifteen minutes equals twenty-five, thirty minutes equals fifty, and forty-five minutes equals seventy-five. Not all that complicated, right? I didn't think so, but for the purposes of adding up my minutes, I just converted the quarters back into their minute equivalents, so I made fifty into thirty minutes and seventy-five into forty-five minutes. Still keeping up? So forty-five minutes plus thirty minutes equals an hour and fifteen minutes.

Now, the only reason I asked for help from my co-worker was for her to explain to me where to put some overtime hours. This is where the trouble started. At first, she thought I hadn't reached overtime the previous day, which was wrong. I'd surpassed and exceeded forty hours the previous day. I added them up, and came up with a total. I even used a calculator. She tried the same thing but came up with a different number, and claimed that I was cheating myself of time because I wasn't adding correctly. Trying to explain the conversion drew a serious of blank stares, mumbled utterances, and a sleepy-eyed look of total bafflement. Why was this so hard?

At the risk of sounding like a total elitist, I have to offer that this girl has offered clues that her ability to cognitively function on a plain of reality akin to those of most functioning adults may be lesser than those of an average high-school student. Her intellectual incuriosity is overwhelming. I can converse with her, and a supervisor even commented on the fact that we appeared to know one another since we got along so well, but I can tell there's not much to her than the base in nature. To top it off, and what should be the tell-all sign of problems regarding this, is the fact that she's a journalism major who doesn't like to read. I hear gasps of disbelief. "What?" "Is that possible?" I'm afraid it is, and it's a scary fact of life to comprehend.

These creatures aren't foreign to me, and I'm sure most others who attended college. Even my undergrad classes were populated with people who had no interest in the subjects they were supposed to be majoring in, in this case English and Literature. Why people are drawn to liberal arts degrees yet have no actual interest in the material is best left to another post altogether.

Back to the original query. Why do people seem to act dumber than they are? Is it just an effort to avoid having to think? Or is it boredom? Or perhaps a combination of all the above. I don't know, but it's a perplexing phenomenon that grows more and more intriguing everytime I encounter it. I'm thinking that, in the grand scheme of things, that acting dumb can be an advantage to some, and this just naturally extends to all encounters in their lives. Being dumb grants you immunity from being expected to do too much. If you don't know anything, how can you be responsible for anything as well? Right, you can't. These people, though, are, I think, stranger than those I mentioned above who operate in a zombie-like haze induced by countless nights of little or no sleep. Those people seem to be just trying to avoid conversations with people they don't want to talk to. It's easy to appear distracted and tired. That gets you off the hook for so many things. Acting stupid does as well, but it comes with a worse set of labels. I would rather be thought of as being overworked than stupid, but I took English classes because I like to read, so I'm probably not the best person to consult on the matter.