Haha, that’s great! My roommate is a semi-pro skydiver and you’ve described him exactly. All he cares about is skydiving and he loves to drop technical terms to watch one’s eyes glaze over. Oh, and he was there, man, at the beginning, when thing were raw, when they took their lives into their hands big time, jumping with bedsheets, basically, man.
Is this a whoosh?
(don’t say I’m humorless, I’m laughing as I type this)
Sorta whoosh, sorta not. And I am a woman, too.
What I was specifically thinking of when I wrote that, were those office type environments where you’ve got the PC police, that can’t take a joke, can’t relax, and get their panties in a bunch at the least provocation. Places that have protocols and guidelines. Most of those types of places tend to be female dominated. And completely humorless, pissy, and politically charged.
Construction job sites tend to be a little more straightforward.
Ah, I gotcha. I was just thinking about this one saleslady who comes by Hubby’s workplace - I mean, the bawdy jokes she tells! She’s a hoot.
It seems to me that it’s the corporate culture which sets the tone for humor in the office. Sometimes dominated by one gender, sometimes the other. But I have run into the humorless type you mentioned. They’re no fun at all!
My answer to both is authors. You meet a novelist who has seen some of the world and has an interesting point of view, and they can regale you with stories, and it’s just fascinating. There are some authors I could literally listen to all night be completely entranced–and they can be talking about laundry night. It doesn’t matter.
But I knew a lot of MFA candidates when I was in grad school–I took workshops with them and went to their readings and parties and the like. They were really nice people, but they were so very dull. I can’t even exactly put my finger on why. But they’d start talking and my eyes would start glazing over.
Literature/English professors are a lot of fun. I don’t think I’ve ever met a boring one. but then, I like when they talk literature at me.
There are interesting and dull people in every profession, of course, so I don’t mean this as a generalization, but… I have yet to meet a cosmetologist/hair dresser/beautician/etc. who isn’t interesting as hell. They’re down-to-earth, are exposed to all walks of life, have interesting stories about any topic you could mention, and (if all else fails for interest-grabbing) can be as catty as Mr. Blackwell on passers-by’s looks. The only bad thing I can say about this class of people is that they tend to be taken, damnit. I’d so date a cosmetologist.
Dullest, in my experience: mid-level managers. Cautious, blandly pleasant, conservative.
To comment on the educators. I think 7 - 12 teachers can be very interesting…
However I have yet to find one interesting k - 6 teacher in the four schools I teach at. Every single one of them are “supermoms” or “superdads” Conversations range from last weeks soccer match to the upcoming hockey meet. If I’m lucky and we venture into the world of literature, someone might discuss the latest romance novel to hit the grocery store.
Yeesh…
Athletes I’ve met are very dull, but the supervisor-manager type people are usually interesting. If I wrote a story and included some of the managers I’ve met as characters, nobody would believe that such eccentric and strange people existed.
On reflection factory workers MUST be the most boring workers in the U.K. at least.
Their conversations consisted entirely of Work
People at work.
T.V soaps
Their once a year package holiday
Their W/E night out at the same old pubs,the same old club and the same old people.(Often from work)
They appeared to have never voluntarily read a book in their lives,watched any serious T.V. programme,travelled to any country not a holiday destination,had an original idea in their lives or done anything in the least bit risky. or had a life in fact,the main thing was not to seem different from the people that they knew.
Strangely enough I never really seemed to fit in no matter how dumb or unimaginative I tried to act.
I would raise that to about 80% (80 20 rule and all that). There is just a sameness to all those guys who enter those “high powered professions”. I can even plot their life path:
-Raised in Connecticut, Long Island, Massachusetts, New Jersey, etc.
-Summer camp in New England
-Prep school or private school in an affluent suburb
-Played football, baseball, hockey, lacrosse, basketball etc in high school
-Same top schools - BC, Colgate, Columbia, Fordham, Harvard, Holy Cross, Lehigh, NYU, etc
-Wear a lot of baseball caps, Abercrombie clothes and listen to Jack Johnson (in my day it was Dave Mathews)
-Same fraternities, clubs, and activities
-Work for accounting, consulting, banking or law firms in Boston, New York or Philly (or if you are a woman add publishing and fashion)
-Live in the same neighborhoods like Boston’s Alston Brighton area or Manhattans Upper East Side where they share a place with 2 other people
-Lots of “Deloitte Corporate Casual” outfits - chinos and blue glen plaid Brooks Brothers clothes
-Continue lifestyle of excessive drinking and promiscuous sexual behavior (to whatever extent possible) that often started in high school
-Summer shore house in the Hamptons, Jersey Shore or Newport, RI with 15 friends
-Work 80+ hours a week and travel to the point where work becomes your entire life
-Change jobs every 2-4 years
-Get married around 28-35 and move to the suburbs
-Golf a lot
-With some luck make partner / managing director of your firm
-Raise some kids to repeat the cycle
I feel disloyal saying this but one of my mates was well interesting to talk to as a student but when he got his Physics Phd his one topic of conversation revolved around all things nuclear.
I dont know if this is relevant but the Uni he was at with the rest of my mates dropped the Physics degree permamently from their syllabus from a lack of new enterants but also because just about everyone of them flunked out because of partying all of the time rather then studying,even on the eve of important exams for chrissakes.
I must confess to an element of guilt on being part of the problem rather then part of the solution.
I hang my head in shame.
In your day? Dave Matthews is still very popular - more popular than Jack Johnson, I’d say, and justifiably so (Johnson is a good musician but has like 6 good songs and they all sound the same - DMB was pushing the envelope of mainstream pop music 10 years ago with their saxes and violins and world-music influences and has been going strong ever since, even though I think he really got lame after “American Baby,” he still draws huge crowds.)
I posted a bit that got some interesting replies WRT the world of inventory and how much depth there is in supply chain and product performance modeling.
When most people hear inventory they think counting loose screws all day, that only happens when some warehouse monkey can’t figure out which bin he just pulled a part from and just scans one that looks kinda right.