Retards revisited

I used to work in a large government organisation that was well leavened with retards and boneheads. That's not unusual - in any group of more than say 20 people, one person is bound to be a retard. It's just a law of large numbers of people. You never get rid of the retards. I read a book on GE last year, and they went through the ranks every single year and weeded out the retards and guess what? Next year, they always found another batch to get rid of. I don't know how retards are created - whether they hide in cracks in the system and emerge when you least expect it, but they are like the poor. They will always be with us.

One of the most memorable retards that I have met was a bloke in our regiment back in the early 1990's. He was utterly hopeless and stupid. The recruiters must have been asleep when they let him sign the papers - I am sure the ARES was not that desperate for bodies back then that they just had to let this bloke in.

Anyway, our platoon was stuck with him, and we all knew that if we ever went into combat, we'd start by shooting him and then get on with blatting the enemy. It was nothing personal - he was just a greater risk to us than the enemy could ever be. He's the kind of guy that would pick up an anti-tank weapon the wrong way and fire the round into us rather than the bad guys. He'd fumble and drop a grenade. God help us if he ever got his hands on the radio - he'd be calling in arty on us as day and night.

He had to go. Even if it meant shooting him in the back.

Fast forward some years to my large government organisation. Due to numerous restructures and reorganisations over the years, I worked in companies that had 500 people, 5000 people and 15000 people. Each one had a very different corporate culture, and a very different attitude to retards.

In the small organisation, the number of retards could be counted on one hand. Everyone knew who they were, and they were effectively quarantined into jobs where they were a risk to no one until they could be gotten rid of. They were always gotten rid of in the end. It might take a few years to remove the most limpet-like creatures, but they were always shown the exit. Management was quite relentless about weeding out the knobheads.

Then we merged and found ourselves in an organisation of 5000. Suddenly, the retards went from 5 or less to well into the hundreds. The company was 10 times larger, but the number of retards was probably 50 times greater. They were not 1% of the workforce - they were 5% of the workforce and it made a large difference to how we operated. Some managers were keen on removing them, but most unfortunately were of the "live and let live" variety. The number of retards was fairly static as some were removed, but others always sprang up to take their place.

Some years later, we had another merger and suddenly there were 15,000 of us. The percentage of retards went up to 10%, as the organisation that we merged with was awash with them.

When I say "retards", I am not referring to what are sometimes called "class C" people. You can divide any group of people into three sections - the A class, who are the go-getters; the B class, who make up the bulk of the population and who are wandering along following the leaders, and the C class, who are generally useless and need to be beaten with sticks to do anything.

Retards are in a class of their own. As their name suggests, they actually retard progress. The C class are not retards, as they just sit around on their arse doing nothing. Unless they are sitting in your way, they don't actively prevent you from doing anything. Retards however see it as their mission in life to fuck things up for everyone else.

The only reason they are called retards is that they are too stupid to realise that they are creating havoc for all around them. If they were just malicious psychopaths who enjoyed making life difficult for others, I'd call them psychos. But they're not - they're just idiots who lack common sense, think they know it all and are impossible to reason with. Logic is not a tool that they are acquainted with.

In my last workplace, there were only 3-4% A class people, which is not bad. I reckon they make up no more than 5% of the general population. A really, really good company might attract lots of good people and have 10%, but that's about it.

We had maybe 40% B class - the worker bees. Then we had about 45% C class and then 10% retards at the bottom.

B class people are good to work with. Any company that is 80% or so B class should be a good place to work.

C class people are a pain in the arse. They are the ones that sit around all day, reading the paper and failing to do all the things that you told them. They are the people that need to be reminded 8 or 9 times a day that they are being paid to sit there, so they should get on with counting the paper clips. They used to be called lazy or useless. A good company should have no more than 10% C class, and they should ruthlessly weed them out every year. You can imagine what it was like when 45% of the people I worked with were like that. Managers spent all their time trying to get them to do some work, and then dealing with the complaints of the B people who were totally overworked because they had to do their job and that of the C's.

Then there was the shoal of retards. I can handle maybe 1% retards in an office, especially if the retards are not in management positions. However, the worst retard of the lot was a manager (not mine thankfully), and the retards were scattered right through each division of our business group. Weeding them out was next to impossible - they were thoroughly entrenched, unionised and knew their "rights" down to the last paragraph.

It was a tough place to work as a result. Me - I just would have shot the lot and been done with it. But I couldn't do that - I had to "counsel" them and "empower" them and "facilitate" all sorts of crap - and they knew it was crap. They were just coasting along, drawing a salary and throwing a daily handful of sand into the great gearbox of life.

The only answer I came up with was to leave. If you can't shoot them, then you should shoot through.

But there's more.

We got a new big boss, and this person had the impression that if we brought in a private company to do the work, everything would be rosy because they'd have lots of A type people on the books, some B's and no C's.

Well, I spent some months with these people as I was heading out the door, and I can say that I met maybe one A type in all that time. Maybe 2. They had a reasonable proportion of B's, but also an amazing number of C's. I never met a retard, but that company was not full of superstars. If anything, it had fewer A type people to actually drive the entire show, and their proportion of C types was probably 30%. The quantum leap in quality that our new boss was looking for is never going to materialise. I dont know what planet they originated from, but it ain't this one.

Even more hilarious is the fact that I am now working for a large private sector company that is supposed to be a world wide leader in what it does.

I have not met that many people so far, but my impression is that the A types are thin on the ground. Very thin. It also seems to have ranks of C types slaving away in the cubicle farms (or perhaps loafing away).

I haven't met a retard though, so things are looking up.