How do incredibly inobservant people survive?

The BBQ Pit
1

That’s a kind of rhetorical question, because this particular individual, exactly like another person I broke relations with two years ago, survives by being “the big friendly guy”.

He started work the same day as me. Same training class. We kinda fell together because we’re the same age (older in a class of kids) and because we had a somewhat similar background (IT, divorced). Within a week, we had a falling out because we were in a hurry to leave a restaurant to get back to work before we were late and;
a> He was told 3 minutes before we left that we had to go.
b> As the rest of us are putting on our coats and saying that we have to run, he’s going back for more food.
c> Then he tries to get us to sit down and eat the desserts he brought back (from the buffet line - as if we hadn’t already gotten our own).
d> As the other four of us run out the door, he’s dragging his ass saying that he doesn’t care if we’re late - when he isn’t driving and doesn’t even have a license.
e> He gets in my car, leaves the door wide open even though the car next to us is moving and I tell him three times to shut the door - because he has the desserts in one hand and a pop in the other hand and for twenty full seconds, he’s confused as to how to set them down in order to close the door (Hint: it’s not rocket science)
f> Then he gets pissy with ME because I state that I would not appreciate having my car damaged because he’s “busy” and can’t close the door in the face of an impending, then finally;
g> He sets down the pop unsupported in the middle of the floor so that when we start moving, it dumps over - all over the floor.

The falling out was mostly on his end, refusing to speak to me after this, because I dared to say that I didn’t like the idea that he was too busy to close the damned car door. I didn’t say anything about the ‘being late’ thing or the pop all over the floor of my car.

Ok, but that went long on me and isn’t the real point, although it’s getting there.

The Instructor asks a question on our final day of classes while he’s preparing us for our final exam. I answer it. We discuss in class for 3-4 minutes. Instructor asks another question. Dillweed interrupts him to answer the first question. Three people near him point out that we already covered that. He says “Oh, I wasn’t listening because I was busy looking it up”. In a defensive manner that implied that he was in the right and other people were being jerks for pointing out that we’d moved on.

We order pizzas. The 3 for $15 bucks deal. Ok, there are taxes, delivery charges and a tip. So it comes to $23, of which he ends up paying $7.5. Goes ballistic, because he shouldn’t have to pay more than $5 for the pizza because he’d been told they were three for $15. Repeated explanations bounce off the wall of his rock head as he insinuates that he’s being cheated. :mad: If I’d have known he was involved (I was asked by the third party if I wanted in), I’d have said no.

Earlier in the week, the instructors show us a key website for looking up stuff related to our shifts. They put it up on a white board for two solid days. On the final day, they ask if we all have it. Chimpbrain goes ballistic again, declaring that he’d never seen it, and when told that it was on a white board for two days, demanding that someone go get it. :dubious:

We end training on Friday and start our new shifts today. Ones we SIGNED UP FOR two weeks ago. That means some of us worked today (Saturday), because we don’t have weekends. At the very end of the day, Bunghole asks when he’s supposed to come back to start his shift. They ask him his schedule. He claims not to know, even though he’s been discussing ALL FUCKING WEEK with two guys he’s trying to get rides from and knows are on his same shift. Then he’s all confused because he didn’t realize that when he signed up for a shift that had wednesday and thursday off, he’d actually be required to work today and not be off until wednesday and thursday “How does that work???” :smack:

There’s a work performance process that’s been pounded into us since day one. We all know it, it isn’t hard. We’ve honestly talked about it every single day for five solid weeks. There are even charts on the walls of people’s performance ratings. Our very last day of training, I start talking to someone else about my stats, jackass hears it and starts going off about how it can’t work that way because “someone” told him something else (god knows when). Obvious he hasn’t paid any attention, obvious the moron doesn’t even know how Averages work, when he’s nearly 50. Throws a fit in front of everyone demanding to have it explained, because “someone” told him something different.
I mean, some of it is just plain idiocy, some of it is asshattery, but a great deal of this and other things that has happened is because he’s not fucking paying attention.

But he’s very friendly when he’s not being an asshat. I guess that’s how he survives and thrives in the modern world.
Of course, in that first week, I had already put two and two together from his various stories to learn that his ‘big traumatic divorce’ ten years ago was really caused by the fact that the jackass had a second family going with a child by the second woman. (“Divorced ten years ago” + “12 year old child (“not mine”) from a 10 year relationship that ended 3 years ago” = Relationship with other woman started 3 years before divorce, child born two years later, divorce one year after that. Again, it’s not rocket science.)
Ok, so to some degree, I’m just venting about an asshole I know, but I guess I’m also trying to figure out how so many people let such consistent asshattery and bad behavior slide for people who carry themselves as being “friendly”.

Which again, is a rhetorical question, because I’ve been there, done that for too many years and learned from repeatedly being burned by such people.

2

No idea, man. Darwin would weep.

3

I don’t have a copy on hand, but I’m sure any of 500 SDMB members can quote from memory the passage describing Zaphod’s various types of stupidity, one of which was simple laziness.

4

I was about to make a sarky comment about the OP not being very observant about the correct forms of the word “observant”, when a bit of checking shows that “inobservant” is indeed a word. “Unobservant” outnumbers it more than ten to one, but inobservant does apparently exist. Ignorance fought.

5

One of my favorite sayings: “It costs nothing to pay attention”.

6

if memory serves Zapod was
pretending to be stupid to put people off guard.
pretending to be stupid cuz he was lazy and wanted someone to do it for him
pretending to be outrageously stupid to cover the fact that he didn’t know what was going on
and being genuinely stupid

In regards to the OP, we, as a society have crafted a world which insulates us from the consequences of mistakes and momentary lapses of concentration, you’re buddy there is the downside

7

I think we need to blame the guy who invented…RAILINGS!

-Joe

8

The reason they survive so well is that they are really paying better attention than they might seem. Just notice how they gravitate towards people who accommodate them, e.g. giving them a ride in a car, or putting up with their yelling at others when they are the ones who make the huge blunders. Or notice how they hang around those people who try earnestly to explain to them again and again and again whenever they screw up and throw a ridiculous tantrum. And notice how they never cling to those who treat them the way they treat others. If that bubblehead in the OP met a guy like himself he’d immediately steer clear, because he’d know he couldn’t pull that crap with that type of person. He is not really so clueless, but is supremely skilled at choosing who to abuse, and knowing when it won’t cause him the appropriate backlash (such as a serious ass-whipping). So yes, they do know exactly what they’re doing, and exactly how to do it. In his twisted mind he is the perpetual victim and all the nice people who put up with him are hell-bent on abusing him. In the end you get better treatment from them when you consistently and blatantly ignore them. Just let them be stupid and throw their tantrums without your participation in any form. Or failing that, maybe just show them you can be even nuttier than they are? I’ve occasionally done that with great results.

The other thing to remember is to never be swayed again by the “big friendly guy” act. While it may occasionally seem genuine, it is really only a device to cause you to drop your guard, so you will be conveniently available for the next tantrum-throwing session.

9

Well, you’re on to something there, raindrop, but I’d qualify that ‘paying better attention than you think’ thing. They’re not paying attention to what is being said or what it being expected of them, they’re paying attention to who allows them to get away with their shit and who thinks they’re the good guys.

This particular individual, I’ll call him R, reminds me a great deal of a previous now former friend who I’ll call G. Big guy, very friendly, very gregarious, but utterly clueless about the world because he never paid attention to shit. I ultimately ended our friendship for the same hostile crap. I’d just had enough of arguing with him because he’d get some idea in his head that had no relationship to the reality going on around him, but he seemed to think that if he just kept repeating it often enough, the other people would see his point. (Now there’s an obsessive-compulsive ignorance issue!)

R isn’t that bad, but he does argue about things when he’s completely wrong. But in his case, it’s more because he’s not paying attention, and less about the “on what fucking planet does that make sense” things that G would pull out of his ass. Of course, if I had to choose between them, I’d go with G, because at least he had a modicum of Integrity, which is important to me.

There have been a few other individuals like this in my past. I keep wondering how they end up in my life. I do weed them out sooner or later, but are these people really this common???

10

The guy in the OP sounds like an asshole with ADD.

11

This story is very familiar. Did you already post this in another thread or am I going crazy?

12

I’m confused. You’re wondering ‘how this person survives’ when he is a 50 year old divorcee, has no driver’s license, and appears to be training for an entry-level job (which I imagine pays shit), with questionable results. Aside from dying or applying for welfare I doubt there’s much farther down he can get.

Sounds like he hasn’t in any, way, shape or form been ‘insulated from the consequences of his actions’.

13

Yeah, I did.

People who are utterly clueless and wrapped up in their own petty tasks in the face of dangerous situations are not people I want to hang out with, and I’ve encountered a few of these people over the years.

For R;

Clue #1: Put the desserts on your lap. They’re wrapped in a napkin. Transfer the pop from your right hand to your left hand. Use right hand to close the door. Put the desserts on the floor if you feel the need. Hold onto the pop. Now we can go. Problem solved in two seconds. Twenty seconds of dramatically waving your full hands around and getting pissy because I keep asking you to close the door doesn’t impress me as to your intelligence.

Oh, and don’t flop back empty handed and rest your arm on my emergency brake (which is on) with your hand against my stick shift (the car is a manual) then grin at me. We’re not going far until you move your fucking arm, and I’m not impressed with the passive-aggressive smile bullshit. No, I’m not going to buy any “you’re not nice” bullshit over it, because I’m not the one playing games in the hopes of drawing a negative response that you can turn around to make me the bad guy with.
Clue #2: If you don’t have a driver’s license and have to rely on others for rides, you should probably act with a little more courtesy and forethought as to your situation. I don’t give a fuck if you don’t mind being late. I DO, and I’m driving. Push your luck too far and you’ll be an hour or more later than you expected, because you’ll be walking or hitch-hiking.
Clue #3: If you’re in a training class, you should probably pay some attention. That’s what it’s for. Now I understand why you had the goofy grin on your face while sitting five feet from the Instructor during the last hour every day when we were meeting to discuss things. You were smiling because for you, this was an hour to vacate your brain and relax, not time to pay attention to the lessons of the day and the issues that others had with the training.
Clue #4: Yes, a zero still counts when calculating an average. An average is the total of all the scores divided by the number of scores.
Oh hell. I could list more clues all day long. Time for you to be buying them wholesale in large lots. You’re a jackass.
Fortunately for me, we’re now done with training and I don’t have to deal with this man anymore. Now we’re on different shifts, which only overlap a couple of hours three days a week, and he’s on a different team which is some distance from mine.

14

I used to make a lot more money too, as did quite a number of people in my class. The woman next to me was used to making $80k a year. The very first day, upon seeing all these people, my first reaction was;

“Wow. The economy really sucks.”

A lot of us view this as only temporary, until we get back on our feet.

15

Sounds like it does indeed. Best of luck.

16

God loves the obtuse because they ask so few questions.

17

I once made $90k a year. That was 14 years ago.

18

I made approximately $65k a year, plus perhaps another $5-10k from my small investments, back in 2001. But I had to quit that job or I’d have been dead in a year from what the stress was doing to my body.

Making buckets of money doesn’t mean shit if you don’t live to enjoy it (or don’t enjoy it while you’re doing it).

But likewise, I’ve been shown very clearly over the last seven years that bad things do happen to good people, and not everything happens for a reason. A lot of really good people end up in bad situations through no fault of their own - and I’m not talking about myself. The idea that if you’re not doing well, it’s because you’re doing something wrong is a hard entrenched idea in the American psyche. We look down on people who fail, who fall.

The more I see it, the more I begin to think that the real purpose - the real enhancer of that idea - is because it helps really nasty people to think that they’re good people. Because obviously, if they’re doing well, it’s because they deserve it.

19

Oh, I totally agree, and that’s exactly what I was trying to convey overall. I was just trying to say it’s those particularly observant qualities of picking out those who will put up with his nonsense that makes him so able to survive. And I’ve been there too, so I’m not just lecturing you. But some of us tend to put up with too much, and give the no-gooders too many chances. And they in turn are quick to pick up on the fact that we will accommodate them way more than we should, and more than other people would. In fact they are much better at picking up on our openness and tolerance than we are in picking up on their potential misuse of us.

I think there are a lot of people like him, but also a lot who aren’t. It’s their focused predatory nature and their keen ability to pick us out of a crowd that makes them seem so numerous. But I’ve also noticed that they know exactly who they should avoid.

In any case, good luck on the new job.