Stoopid People
Stoopid People are so stupid that you have to spell it with two O’s because one U just isn’t stupid enough. However, Stoopid People are not ignorant. Ignorance is simply a lack of knowledge—everyone’s ignorant about something; some are ignorant about a lot of something. Stoopid People aren’t “in over their heads,” either. Again, everyone’s like that sometimes. No, stoopid people are a very specific lot.
Stoopid People are that rare combination of shortsightedness, misguided stubbornness, laziness, and selfishness. Given the chance they’ll make easy jobs hard and hard jobs near impossible. Stoopid People are the type of employees you just want to give a crash helmet, some milk ‘n’ cookies and sit ‘em in a corner away from sharp objects until the yellow short bus that dropped their detrimental butts off that morning comes back to pick ‘em up. (My apologies to anyone who’s ever ridden in a yellow short bus.)
Stoopid People are that rare combination of shortsightedness, misguided stubbornness, laziness, and selfishness. Given the chance they’ll make easy jobs hard and hard jobs near impossible. Stoopid People are the type of employees you just want to give a crash helmet, some milk ‘n’ cookies and sit ‘em in a corner away from sharp objects until the yellow short bus that dropped their detrimental butts off that morning comes back to pick ‘em up. (My apologies to anyone who’s ever ridden in a yellow short bus.)
There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe,
and it has a longer shelf life.
—Frank Zappa
and it has a longer shelf life.
—Frank Zappa
“Stoopid Janet”
It’s summer of 2000 and “Janet” joins UPSHOT Chicago as our new senior account director, just a notch below VP. She comes in with a good reputation from the client side with a couple Fortune 500 companies on her resume. She’s given a couple clients (Mello Yello, Sprite, etc.) to run plus a handful of account execs to supervise. On first impression, she shows herself to be a perfect fit—she’s charming, knows all the business jargon, echoes all the same goals, yak-yak-yak… Fools the whole joint cold.
My first clue that Janet is stoopid comes when she starts bringing back assignments from our clients without creative briefs. Written by the lead AE, creative briefs are instructions explaining how a client wants a project executed. The brief tells what’s due, when it’s due, budget, etc. An account director who can’t do a brief is like a doctor that can’t write a diagnosis.
Instead of writing a creative brief, Janet would come into meetings with a legal pad fulla chicken-scratch and soundbites of what she thought the client said. Next she’d tell everyone how she promised the client that we’d deliver everything ASAP. Then we’d waste a half-hour on basic questions like: “Do they want a print ad or an FSI? What exactly does the product do? Who’s the target audience? What is our budget?” It was Account Service 101 and any entry-level AE could’ve and would’ve done it. But not Janet—she was from the Stoopid People tribe, which meant she only knew how to do one thing well: Make everyone else’s job harder.
Janet also had a wonderful habit of ignoring advice. Whenever she screwed something up (which was early and often) people would stop and explain to her how to do it right. But Janet would just give ‘em that vacuous Paris Hilton stare and then run off and do the exact same stoopid thing all over again. Why? Because:
Stoopid People are hardheaded.
They don’t listen. In their minds they’re smarter than you. Some actually think they’re doing you a favor by letting you talk to them.
When in doubt/danger, Stoopid People lie.
Janet’s favorite lie was, “[Someone Powerful] wants you to do this.” People were usually too busy not to take her at her word so they just did whatever she said believing she had backup. Sometimes it got out that she was a lying name-dropper, but it didn’t matter. See, Janet had an ace in the hole:
By mid-2001 the economy was crashing. Budgets were getting slashed and accounts were going up for review all over the country. And while she was stoopid, Janet had some big-time industry connects. She knew people—people who managed brands with big budgets often up for review. We laid-off some 60 people that year, but not Janet. Her Fortune 500 connects made her a potential cash cow so they kept her around.
Stoopid People are like roaches—where there’s one more will come.
As I said earlier, Janet had several execs under her. A couple were fresh out of school, the rest were older but still somewhat raw. Part of Janet’s deal was training them to be good account execs. But she was too stoopid to do her job right, nevermind teaching others how to do theirs.
So Janet’s bad habits became theirs. She didn’t write briefs; they didn’t write briefs. She misunderstood clients; they misunderstood clients. She was unorganized; they were unorganized… Instead of having one bad account exec, we ended up with six. Actually they really weren’t bad account execs, they just made mistakes that were the direct result of having a genuinely stoopid boss.
Stoopid People Fail Upward.
In business, people tend to rise to their level of incompetence. But every now and then some get just dumb enough to go a little further. Sometimes Stoopid People get on winning teams and reap the same rewards as everyone else, like when a company has a banner year and everyone, including the stoopid ones get fat bonuses or promotions. That’s failing upward.
Self-made Messiahs Love Stoopid People.
Stoopid People create drama and Self-made Messiahs are drama queens. Our company’s SMs loved Janet. They followed her like dogs after fat people knowing sooner or later they’d eat. And Janet rarely disappointed. Whenever they caught her slipping they’d slide right in with, “Janet screwed up but I fixed it…” But after a while some of them got sick of her. There’s “stupid” and there’s “crazy.” Janet was stoopid—working with her was just plain crazy.
Stoopid is as Stoopid listens to.
You can’t reason with stoopid. You can’t discuss with stoopid. You can’t council or reassign stoopid. Stoopid people only understand other stoopid people. Truly stoopid people only understand one thing: ultimatums.
My first clue that Janet is stoopid comes when she starts bringing back assignments from our clients without creative briefs. Written by the lead AE, creative briefs are instructions explaining how a client wants a project executed. The brief tells what’s due, when it’s due, budget, etc. An account director who can’t do a brief is like a doctor that can’t write a diagnosis.
Janet also had a wonderful habit of ignoring advice. Whenever she screwed something up (which was early and often) people would stop and explain to her how to do it right. But Janet would just give ‘em that vacuous Paris Hilton stare and then run off and do the exact same stoopid thing all over again. Why? Because:
Stoopid People are hardheaded.
They don’t listen. In their minds they’re smarter than you. Some actually think they’re doing you a favor by letting you talk to them.
When in doubt/danger, Stoopid People lie.
Janet’s favorite lie was, “[Someone Powerful] wants you to do this.” People were usually too busy not to take her at her word so they just did whatever she said believing she had backup. Sometimes it got out that she was a lying name-dropper, but it didn’t matter. See, Janet had an ace in the hole:
By mid-2001 the economy was crashing. Budgets were getting slashed and accounts were going up for review all over the country. And while she was stoopid, Janet had some big-time industry connects. She knew people—people who managed brands with big budgets often up for review. We laid-off some 60 people that year, but not Janet. Her Fortune 500 connects made her a potential cash cow so they kept her around.
Stoopid People are like roaches—where there’s one more will come.
As I said earlier, Janet had several execs under her. A couple were fresh out of school, the rest were older but still somewhat raw. Part of Janet’s deal was training them to be good account execs. But she was too stoopid to do her job right, nevermind teaching others how to do theirs.
So Janet’s bad habits became theirs. She didn’t write briefs; they didn’t write briefs. She misunderstood clients; they misunderstood clients. She was unorganized; they were unorganized… Instead of having one bad account exec, we ended up with six. Actually they really weren’t bad account execs, they just made mistakes that were the direct result of having a genuinely stoopid boss.
Stoopid People Fail Upward.
In business, people tend to rise to their level of incompetence. But every now and then some get just dumb enough to go a little further. Sometimes Stoopid People get on winning teams and reap the same rewards as everyone else, like when a company has a banner year and everyone, including the stoopid ones get fat bonuses or promotions. That’s failing upward.
Self-made Messiahs Love Stoopid People.
Stoopid People create drama and Self-made Messiahs are drama queens. Our company’s SMs loved Janet. They followed her like dogs after fat people knowing sooner or later they’d eat. And Janet rarely disappointed. Whenever they caught her slipping they’d slide right in with, “Janet screwed up but I fixed it…” But after a while some of them got sick of her. There’s “stupid” and there’s “crazy.” Janet was stoopid—working with her was just plain crazy.
Stoopid is as Stoopid listens to.
You can’t reason with stoopid. You can’t discuss with stoopid. You can’t council or reassign stoopid. Stoopid people only understand other stoopid people. Truly stoopid people only understand one thing: ultimatums.
Understanding is a wellspring of life unto him that hath it:
but the instruction of fools is folly.
—Proverbs 16:22
but the instruction of fools is folly.
—Proverbs 16:22
