People are becoming more and more stupid.

I don’t know when it happened or if I’m just noticing it more the older I get but I’m pretty sure people are becoming more and more stupid.  It really got me thinking when I was talking to a recruiter yesterday on the phone.  This recruiter shot me an email about an opening at one the big 3 mortgage banks.  She gave me her contact information and asked for an updated copy of my resume.  Later in the day she called to go over my resume.  She told me the job was for X and asked if I had any experience in the mortgage default business.  When I asked her if she had a copy of my resume in front of her she replied yes.  Well to anyone who has ever been in the mortgage default business word like Loss Mitigation, Foreclosure, and default management are all common terms that denote this.  I explained this to her and she wasn’t familiar with the terms.  I don’t understand why you would be a recruiter for the mortgage industry and not be familiar with the terms.  Not only that, but if your job was to recruit top talent for a specific field wouldn’t you learn what the basic terminology and lingo used was?  I felt like I was teaching a 4 year old about mortgage default through the whole conversation. 

More often it seems these days’ people rely on directions more than common sense.  I can’t tell you how often I’ve trained people and get asked the same questions in situations that are 90% identical.  I also like to reply back with “what do you think you should do?”  It amazes me when people truly don’t know.  If the difference between situation A and situation B is their name but the figures are the issue why are people concerned with details that don’t matter?  During standardized test week we always had a section that was titled reading comprehension.  The gist of it was to read a paragraph and answer questions about the information you just read.  The paragraph contained a mixture of pertinent and non-essential information.  I think job applicants should be required to take tests such as this.  It doesn’t matter that John Smith lives in Washington and Mike Jones lives in Houston when you are trying to figure out their per diem or doing data entry on their PITI payment. 

Sometimes a person is smart but people are dumb; have you heard the old adage of “mob mentality”?  I think this is a proven fact.  I hear reasonably intelligent people making the dumbest arguments because people will agree with them.  Congress and a good portion of laws they enact are a good example of these.  After the Arizona shooting NY Rep. Peter King calls to impose a ban on carrying a firearm within 1,000 feet of any “high profile” public official.  Can you imagine a constantly moving gun free zone?  The fact that Michael Bloomberg and others agree with this is ridiculous.  Another trend that is starting to develop is when kids in high school get caught sexting and the DA tries to convict them for child pornography.  If a 15 or 16 year old sends an inappropriate picture to another 15 or 16 year old they should not be branded for the rest of their life as a sex offender.  Nor should they receive the same punishment guidelines that a 30 year old man receives if he is caught with child pornography.  I think you need to make a clear distinction in these cases as they are not near the same.

Well I was going to write some more things about idiotic people and the laws that are enacted but as it turns out I have to deal with some pretty ignorant people right now.  I have a guy who has watched just enough Law and Order that he thinks if he uses a few buzz words here and there in a threatening manner while bringing up suing our company and me individually it will scare me into giving into his demands.  Sorry folks, but that’s not how it works.  We provide a service and if you violate the terms of the contract and not make your obligated payments then we take action against you.  Just because you were a good (or in this case adequate) customer at one point doesn’t give you the right to harass or threaten the company’s employee’s.  In the words of Herb Kelleher- “The customer is not always right”