Stupid Questions vs. Common Sense
A story about critical thinking, integrity, and intolerance to idiocy
Sometimes, one question is all you need to know where things stand.
There are times when one question will tell you more than enough to realize that you’re in the wrong place.
You might find yourself in a situation where you think you’re interested in something, but then you’re asked that one question - and all of a sudden, your perception of the whole thing changes to a point where you turn around and walk away.
And you’re thankful for that clarity of things. You’re thankful for how one question dispelled any doubts you might have had. I can give you a good example:
A guy once asked me during a job interview, “How would you define the word "culture"?”
“What???”
I thought to myself, “What kind of a douchebag would ask a question like that during an interview for a warehouse job? Do I look fuckin’ retarded to you?”
It’s not how I responded, but that’s how I felt. That’s how the interviewer made me feel when he asked me that ridiculous question. “How would you define the word "culture"?”
How about “Go fuck yourself”? How’s that for culture, you fuckin’ punk?
What kind of a question is that? How is it related to picking and packing boxes?
What exactly are you trying to establish here? Whether or not I’m capable of interacting with others in a polite manner? Whether or not I can speak?
How exactly is this question relevant to a job you’re interviewing me for?
What specifically am I supposed to be doing here? Lifting boxes and printing dispatch paperwork, or writing grounbreaking speeches for the leaders of the world?
Does the job involve spending time on the phone with constituents?
Or is it the same job that I’ve already been doing for the past three months as a temp?
What’s going on here? Are you testing my intelligence? Or trying to insult it?
Do you see how many unnecessary questions can emerge from one question like that?
I wouldn’t mind answering that nonsense had I not known what the job was about.
Thing is, it was a job that required a level of intelligence of a squirrel - by far one of the easiest jobs I ever had. That question just didn’t make sense.
Just because some woke clown in HR department came up with all those questions doesn’t mean you automatically have to ask them - if something doesn’t make sense, there’s no point doing it - but to realize that, you’d have to implement critical thinking and integrity into your thought process. And as the past two years have shown us, that doesn’t seem to be all that obvious to people. It’s much easier to just follow the script.
That’s what most people do - take the easy road. But that doesn’t have to be you.
You don’t have to be yet another spineless cog in the machine. You could add some character into the mix - and that would actually make people want to work for you, rather than put up with your bullshit out of desperation.
That’s the difference between a leader and a sheep - a leader knows when to follow, whereas a sheep just follows blindly.
The interview continued for two, maybe three more equally-moronic questions,
at which point it ended. Cut the long story short, I didn’t get that job. Thank God.
What a hopeless deadbeat of a place it was, you’d never believe it unless you saw it.
My point is, one little question told me enough about that guy and the overall atmosphere of the place to know there’s no way in hell I would ever actually enjoy working for that company. As if the few months of working there as a temporary staff didn’t already make me aware of that…
In that case, it was time for me to get out, not to enslave myself to that hellhole for fuck knows how much longer. That would’ve been a giant waste of time.
To sign a full-time contract with that company would be a desperate move.
It’s called “taking the easy road”. It’s what people do for the sake of convenience. Convenience of not having to deal with uncertainty of what tomorrow holds.
People say it’s an “honest” way of living. Maybe, but that depends on how you interpret the word “honest” - do you mean being honest with yourself?
Can you really look at yourself in the mirror and say that you’re honest with yourself?
Because going for a job out of desperation is one thing. Sticking to that job for the sake of convenience is another thing - and that will impact your future on a long run.
If you take a desperate measure as a temporary solution, you can then figure out a way out of it, make up for it and move on, get on to doing better things. That’s progress.
Whereas when you turn that desperate measure into a permanent solution, things can unexpectedly go wrong in ways that are very hard (if not impossible) to predict.
You get your hi-vis jacket, you get your timesheet, you get assigned to a shift, you get up, go to work, follow direct instructions, carry out easy but exhausting tasks all day, then sign your timesheet at the end of your shift, go home, eat your dinner, set your alarm clock, go to sleep, then repeat the whole process - over and over again.
You could say it’s an “honest” way of earning a living - fair enough.
But are you really honest with yourself? Are you really living up to your potential?
Aren’t you taking the easy road by any chance? Aren’t you opting-in for convenience?
Ask yourself, “How much better would my life be if I was doing something else with it?”
And then ask yourself, “What is stopping me from doing it?”
If you answer yourself with absolute honesty - procrastination and indecisiveness will likely be the main reasons why things in your life look the way they do.
In case of most people, it’s a matter of keeping the Inner Bitch under control.
It’s a matter of making the right choices and limiting the amount of easy choices.
Once you realize that, you’re already on the right track.
And then, following common sense - one of the key traits of the Effective Mindset - you will figure out a way to do something about it rather than just “think” about it.
It’s good to know when to take the lead - and when to follow.
I heard more than a few times that “there are no stupid questions”. That’s utter bullshit.
I could think of many dumb questions. Possibilities are nearly endless, actually.
Or maybe it’s the weed… Anyway, just be a good person. Keep your emotions in check. And that’s it. Trust me, I figured this shit out - so it definitely isn’t rocket science.
It’s more of a matter of integrity and intelligence, to be able to sense whether or not what you’re about to say is the right thing to say. Whether it makes sense or not.
Desperation does strange things to people. Including taking the easy road.
Making easy choices and sticking to them, for the sake of convenience. I never understood that. Have I worked some shit jobs in my life? More than I could count. But neither one of those jobs was ever a long-term post.
Why? Because I expect more of myself. There were some folks who worked at that goddamn place for twenty years, some of them even longer than that.
I can only imagine how much better their lives would turn out had they taken a different turn somewhere down the road.
I remember working there in a team with these two women. One of them was a crazy thirty-something nymphomaniac brunette with a ponytail, dark-tanned in a sunbed, she always wore yellow Timberland boots and tight jeans. She looked good, but there wasn’t much going on inside her head. She always talked about guys she hooked up with - and that’s pretty much all she talked about.
The other was a short blonde in her early forties, going through an existential crisis which manifested itself on a daily basis through all sorts of erratic mood swings.
In other words, an arrogant bitch, disappointed with her life and incapable of controlling her emotions - a package that is never welcome anywhere.
She didn’t want to be there, it was obvious. She was there because she needed a job.
Despite rarely having anything even remotely interesting to say, the brunette was generally a nice person and everyone got along with her just fine.
Unlike the blonde. I could never get along with the blonde, because most of the time she acted as if every unfortunate thing in her life - including being stuck in that job - was a fault of everyone else. Her entire attitude was the exact opposite of ownership.
One thing I couldn’t wrap my head around: if that job made her so fuckin’ miserable, why not just quit? Get over with it, stop wasting time on something that made her feel like shit. Why not just move on? Sometimes you need to make a move forward.
Over the years, I’ve met a lot of people like that. People who were completely unhappy with their lives, but at the same time didn’t do anything about it. They just carried on.
And that’s something I doubt I’ll ever understand. It’s just not my kind of mindset.
“Well, why wouldn’t you just answer the question instead, Mike?”
Why? Because I don’t like being asked moronic questions, that’s why.
You ask me a dumb question, I don’t have time for that. I move on.
Regardless of whether YOU think that I’m a fuckin’ idiot, or whether it’s some clown from HR who wrote those questions, I don’t give a shit. It makes no difference.
Anyway, some things just aren’t meant to be. Sometimes all it takes is your gut feeling.
Sometimes you just know that what you’re about to get yourself into… is not worth it.
That’s when you need to take control and move on.
Don’t take the easy road. Instead, do what’s right.