A Note on Incompetence

We at The They feel a moral obligation to address a disturbing trend amongst society; incompetence. Incompetence has embedded itself deeply into daily discourse and interaction. Those who excel in being incompetent seem to revel in their expertise. We at The They find such eagerness to illustrate mastery of such a low brow achievement distasteful.

We at The They have encountered so many examples of incompetence that it has become ubiquitous. We feel compelled to respond and strike a stand! The escalation of skillful incompetence has risen to such magnitude it distracts and fetters the process of the important things; selecting the correct caviar pairing, determining where to spend winter, ferreting out which invitations to politely decline…. you understand.

For illustration, when recently booking a private aircraft while ours was undergoing maintenance the wrong aircraft was delivered. We expressly ordered a Bombardier BD-700 yet what was delivered was a Gulfstream G650.  When we brought this to the attention of the man wearing his name, he fumbled for words, rustled some papers, turned a few shades of rouge and then pretended to make phone calls. After an excruciating delay in which we were offered water in plastic bottles, the man with the name tag suggested we either take the Gulfstream or fly commercially.

Commercial flying? Like with people? We mean really! How ……common. This event was so trying that we were almost reduced to profanity!

Many rhetorical questions come to mind upon experiencing such rampant incompetence– why would one be proud of perfecting incompetence? Is that truly one’s highest aspiration? How does one reconcile incompetence with its partner… incivility?

Well, dear reader, fear not. We at The They were rescued by competence and quick thinking. Which as you can imagine was difficult given the circumstances. We decided to soothe our frazzled nerves by embarking on our yacht to the next destination. Our plane could meet us at there. As you well know, traveling by sea takes longer than travelling by air. This change of course created a tumult in our schedules. Appointments needed rearranging. Other persons’ people had to coordinate schedules with our people. It was a mess.

This debacle was totally unnecessary had people enacted competently.  This incident was the proverbial last straw in a long list of incompetence encounters. We will spare you, dear reader from the litany of atrocities in which we have been subjected. It might produce nightmares, and we could simply not bear that.

A nice martini aboard our yacht should help calm the nerves.