Tuesday, November 12, 2013

On smartypants

"Smart" is overrated.  For everything that the word stands for, whether it is academic achievement or stunning logic or street experience or photographic memory or walking encyclopedia or just being a plain old lucky ass, the word does not mean half as much as what people appear to think it does. But I'm not saying anything new here.  In fact I'm just repeating what many have always been saying over and over again.

The Queen Boss did the most ridiculous thing today: she skipped lunch.  At 12 noon the meeting seemed like it would almost be over and dismissed for lunch.  There were gentlemen and gentlewomen sitting in that meeting who had not had a morsel to eat since the morning.  But one thing dragged on to the next, and by 1.30 it was clear that we had all missed out on lunch at the time that such lunch would have been customary to be had. But out of courtesy or out of shyness, nobody moved a muscle or raised a point about lunch.  At the end of the meeting, the Queen Boss simply ordered lunch for everyone, and excused herself to get to the next meeting in the other room.

I was indignant.  First, I had been deprived of a timely lunch.  Second, the person responsible had made it complicated for me to hate her for it, because by setting herself as an example it was as if she was nudging me to take note.  "Lunch?", she titters haughtily, "who needs lunch when we have so much exciting work to do?"   That was the vibe I was getting from her.  I did not like that vibe.

She is very smart.  But she really isn't, you know?

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