Bullshitters and Incompetents

I’m off for a meeting tonight in London – the same private website I’ve been working on (and occasionally ranting about) over the last month or so.

It’s all ended up being consistently last-minute, with no real organisation, and a whole bunch of clowns who say they can do their stuff, but so far that conceit has been repeatedly disproved. Which, as regular readers may have noticed, drives me utterly crackers. I know it shouldn’t, that I should be used to it by now, but well, I’m not.

You see, I come from this background where if I can do something, then yes, I’ll shout it from the rooftops. I’m not overly good at being modest – but when it comes to this stuff, I’m bloody good at what I do. And if I don’t know how to do something, then I either a) find out, or b) say “No, I don’t know what you mean by that”. Which seems – to me – to be a pretty sensible way of dealing with life in general.

So when other people tell me “Yes, we know what we’re doing, we’ve done it before”, I tend to believe them. And then I get pissed off when it turns out that actually, they’ve no fucking idea what they’re talking about. Particularly when, by doing things wrong, they then fuck up the stuff that I’ve written already.

Yet somehow it’s me that’s in the wrong. I don’t know if it’s because I just get on and do stuff without fucking it up, or just that these people expect me to talk as much bollocks and bullshit as they do, but if I get pissed off at their incompetence, it’s my fault. I haven’t figured the logic of that one just yet. Maybe I’ll let you all know when/if I do suss it out.

And in the meantime, what’s the best option? Do I just assume that when people say they can write websites, or do certain types of code, or – well – anything, really, that they’re actually lying, and thus utter cunts? Do I save myself the time and stress, by just assuming that everyone else is incompetent? No, probably not – because then I’m just stereotyping, and last time I did that I got accused of being patronising, because I simply assumed that the person I was talking to actually didn’t know what the shit they were talking about.

It’s a no-win situation.

Maybe I should just not let myself get stressed by fuckwits and bullshitters. Yeah, like that‘s gonna happen…