Sunday, November 7, 2010

The Tale of the Token Inquisitive Dumbass

It never fails. Yesterday, after a chaotic commute into the city, I arrived at my destination. I ran in, rushed to the elevator, and finally made it to the to the 35th floor. As luck would have it, the speaker had already started so I made a spectacle of myself as I hurried to the back of the room and sat down in the last available chair.

Just when I thought the heavy breather to my right would win the biggest annoyance of the day award, a cocky guy two seats away from me raised his hand. It was the token inquisitive dumbass (TID). I'd recount every line, but it would bore you to death. Long story short, the speaker was giving big picture examples related to developing and perfecting one's business model, and Mr. Astute, just could not help but showcase his superior reasoning skills. "Well if you were in Hawaii then it would be different because you would be on an island, so the example would change if lets say, you went to an island." It was this profound bit of knowledge, and many very similar ones that followed, that we were lucky enough to have bestowed upon us.

In a perfect world it would be completely appropriate to say "come on guy, you're slowing the presentation down, and to top it off you're making yourself look extremely stupid." We could add a "please" stop slowing down the class, or a "thank you" for refraining from further embarrassing yourself. I'm all for being polite.

Unfortunately, we all just sat there...maybe getting dumber with each one of his contributions. I think the hardest part was watching the TID get up out of his chair upon the conclusion of the presentation, and pompously walk out of the room.

This horror story has no happy ending. The infamous slayer of time and brain cells, the TID, was again victorious.