I have an office job that entails a lot of interaction with people who in the construction industry, small business owners, developers, bankers, etc. I'm too androgynous for my employers to feel comfortable with letting me meet people in person (thank god) so most of it is through email or phone calls. They all vary in education and income; some have PhDs, some never finished high school, some are rich as fuck, some are struggling to get by. Most of them are local but I work with quite a few people from different parts of the country.

There's something that is common between a lot of these people, maybe even the vast majority, is that they cannot do extremely simple tasks or understand simple concepts, even when I try to explain them visually (like I'll share a spreadsheet with them and go through each individual thing I'm doing to show them what I mean). Very few of them get it. I'm not particularly smart or amazing at math or anything, but I'd like to think I can understand simple instructions. Sign this, add these numbers, make this match this. I can't imagine what it's like working in retail if the average person is this dumb.

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Yeah it's worse in some parts, but it's true. I used to have a job where I'd help people write their own name on legal documents because they couldn't read. A guy from my hometown graduated college with a business degree and owns a tire shop. Cannot read. He can sign his name and knows how to add and subtract, but cannot read a page of text and meaningfully gather information from it.

    I also used to work at a grocery store and part of that job involved reading labels or shopping lists for illiterate folks.