26 Times People Listed Careers That Are Intellectually Demanding But Appear To Attract A Lot Of Idiots

Obviously, being smart and being intelligent are not the same thing.

Maryjane

• Published in Interesting
• July 5, 2022

You must have known what career path you wanted to take since you were a child. And you knew how hard you’d have to work to get those jobs, and being smart was part of that.

Study hard so that you can reap the benefits of your efforts later. Yes, education is crucial, and there is no point in debating it.

However, being smart and being intelligent are not the same thing. You can be both, neither, or something in the middle.

What’s more intriguing or disconcerting is finding people with average intelligence working in intellectually demanding jobs. And, believe it or not, it happens quite frequently.

Because of the career path these people have chosen, they appear capable and competent. However, they have managed to coast through life—whether by chance or by being born into a profession—and are incompetent and truly awful at what they do.

People in this r/AskReddit thread were sharing jobs, professions, and fields that appear to require PhD-level intelligence to pull off, but have a surprisingly high number of people with just average intelligence. Aside from simply mentioning occupations, people had enlightening discourse in the comment threads that are worth reading.

More Info: Reddit

1. The Nurses

sayhummus said:

Nurses. I've had few AMAZING nurses but most of the time, all the biggest bullies went to study nursing and now there's an actual problem of workplace bullying in that field.

bread-durst replied:

When I went into labor the first nurse I had to deal with was awful. She didn’t believe my water broke, as I have a puddle of fluid flowing out of me. Then when she went to check to see how dilated I was she couldn’t locate my cervix and got super mad at me for it. Uhhh…it’s not like I’m playing a prank and hid my cervix from you.

2. The School Administrators

3. The Politicians

FineCannGrower said:

Politics.

maiqthetrue replied:

I wouldn't say politicians are dumb. It's just that most people judge them by the Disney version of what their job actually is. The very short version is that the game is to get as many of your side elected and of course get yourself re-elected. That's the whole job. If you can do it by doing good stuff, you do that. But truth be told, that's not a smart way to do it. Most people don't care enough to notice whether anything good happens, or if they do notice, it doesn't translate to votes. What does, it doing what rich donors want, preventing the other side from doing anything to help people, and being a big personality who can weird a zinger on social media.

allthebacon_and_eggs replied:

After I graduated from college, I worked in politics briefly. I had watched a lot of West Wing and thought politicians were as smart, well-read, and educated as an Aaron Sorkin character. It turns out, most are the types from your high school who were popular class clowns, but now they’re adults. Cheerful, smiling, agreeable, and everything has to be a big party or joke. Not a single time did any of them ever talk about a political issue. I’m pretty sure they hadn’t read a book since college (if then). It’s all about whipping out the charm at fundraisers. Not a bright crowd.

4. The Military Personnel

5. The Teachers

thegreatgatsB70 said:

Teaching.

andreaak88 replied:

While I've had some great teachers, some were absolute trash.

I had a teacher who once taught a CAPP extension course, which was essentially volunteering for the community. I can't remember fully, but I think in order to be considered for the class, you had to have a certain GPA. Regardless, the class consisted of all students with decent grades.

We all had a giant group term project that we had to initially present to the class. In total, there were 6 groups to present over a class and half.

When it came time to present, our teacher who I'll call Ms. Aaron, said we would be grading our fellow classmates and their presentations. The first group was about to go up when she added in the fun little fact that we can only give one group 10/10, one group 9/10, and so on.

Well, as you can imagine, everyone flipped their [shawowza]. This was a class of high GPA earners, and telling them someone is going to get a 4/10 didn't sit well with anyone.

Ms. Aaron started threatening people with 0's if no one went up, which only caused further havoc. For the rest of the class, we just sat there all screaming at her while she screamed back at us, it was freaking mayhem.

Obviously nothing was resolved as class ended, so we all just packed up are stuff and continued to talk about it for the rest of the day.

The following morning, back we went to class and instead of seeing Ms. Aaron, we saw the teacher who started the class, Ms. Garfunkel.

Ms. Garfunkel started to lay into us about respecting our teachers and Ms. Aaron is simply following the course outline, so if we don't like what is happening, we should see her and we shouldn't attack Ms. Aaron.

After her speech, a classmate ended up telling Ms. Garfunkel that we have no problem with the course, and it seems Ms. Aaron has spun a wildly inaccurate story. He ended up outing everything that occurred the following day.

The look of utter shock on Ms. Garfunkel's face was beyond telling. She clearly was given some bull [shalala] story by Ms. Aaron.

She excused herself, and for about 10 minutes we all just sat there, before she reemerged with Ms. Aaron.

Ms Garfunkel apologized for everything and said that you will be grading your fellow students whatever grade you see fit and if there are any problems, to come see her directly. As she walked out she side-eyed Ms. Aaron hard.

I hated her so much. For this and also that she was upset I had missed a few days because I had two close relatives die a week apart.

6. The Medical Doctors

7. The Lawyers

8. The Police Officers

9. The Therapist

10. The Special Education Support Staff

11. The Journalists

12. The Finance Specialists

give_me_two said:

Finance really runs the gamut from super bright to dumb as a hammer.

Finance is confusing on purpose (lots of acronyms, lots of numbers) and requires salespeople. That's a potent recipe for sneaking dummies into an intellectually demanding profession.

BardbarianBirb replied:

I used to work at a financial firm helping financial advisors manage their clients accounts and OH MY GOD some of them should not be allowed to handle other peoples finances.

There was one advisor who wanted to apply to trade options on some accounts even though he didn't even know the basics of options and no matter how many times it was explained to him he just didn't understand. He wanted to apply for the highest level of options... that could seriously screw up someone's finances if done improperly. We did not approve him.

Another advisor couldn't figure out how to print a form from our website. He called us for help insisting it was a problem on our end. Turns out he didn't have the printer plugged in and then it didn't even have ink... we asked him after exhausting all other options because we gave him the benefit of the doubt that he would have already checked.

Another advisor, while super nice, couldn't figure out how to attach a file to an email and I had to walk him through creating bookmarks to important pages on our site. I'm sure back in the day he may have been great but in this day and age where so much is done online and paper forms and documents are so much more susceptible to fraud you just can't be computer illiterate.

Another advisor kept getting mad at us even though he kept bringing in the client in to his office, filling out the form wrong and having them sign it, and then sending it to us in a state we could not accept it. He was told several times what options on the form needed to be selected to do what they wanted and instead of realizing he was doing something wrong he just went off on us. But like, without the clients signature on a proper form we legally couldn't do what he wanted, lol, basic reading comprehension would have solved his problem.

13. The Game Developers

14. The Business Managers

15. The Content Creators

16. The Managers Who Are "Yes-People"

17. The Restaurant Owners

fireinstinctNL said:

Restaurant owners... Somehow the most I've met are either or a d**k who does not like to so what they do, or someone who does not know [what the heck] he is doing.

bastele replied:

The problem is that so many people with absolutely zero qualification to open a restaurant somehow want to do exactly that.

SmilingJackTalkBeans replied:

"We quit our jobs and remortgaged our house to follow our dream of owning a restaurant, despite neither of us having any experience in any related industry or any understanding of business or finance. We bought this place in a remote area and remodeled everything at a cost of $1m and have done nothing to promote it and for some reason the customers just aren't coming. Now we haven't paid any bills or taxes for the last eight months and we've maxed out all our credit cards, Chef Ramsay, please save our restaurant and our family!"

Sam-Gunn replied:

---Obligatory overloaded menu scene---

"So what kind of food do you serve?"

"Oh we serve Mexican, Italian, American, Cuban, and bagel bites! Look at our 45 item menu!"

---Obligatory 'we don't label/date anything or store food as per FDA guidelines/common sense'---

"Jesus Christ, what the hell died in here?! WHAT IS THIS?"

"Well that's either last months meatloaf or one of our sponges... Think we can still serve that?"

18. The IT

19. The Car Salespeople

20. The Emergency Medical Technicians

21. The Information Security

22. The Industrial Workers

23. The Software Development

24. Engineering

Anonymous said:

I hate to say it, but engineering.

First as a…customer of the engineering firms, then as an employee, albeit not at the engineering level, and now as an employee/engineering student.

There are just a lot of really stupid engineers.

Shaydu replied:

The reason I would have also answered "engineers" is because most of the ones I've had to deal with think they know how everything works because they understand engineering. It was so aggravating when they took this attitude of, "of course this is how my legal case is going to proceed, because any other possibility wouldn't make sense (to me)."

I have to try to control myself as I try to explain why I, an attorney with 25 years of experience, might just know better than they do about how the courts will treat their lawsuit, especially since I've read hundreds if not thousands of court decisions that have precedential effect (in other words, the lower courts have to follow what they say) which clearly indicate that their engineering-based view of the case isn't how a court will look at it. And they usually just sort of smirk at me in a "I'm completely sure I'm right" sort of way when I patiently try to explain it to them. And then the end result is precisely what I said it would be, and they don't respond by acknowledging I'd been right all along, they just continue to insist the result was wrong.

Another example: an engineering department with a municipality tried retaining us on a lawsuit by sending us a work order. Because why shouldn't that work, it works for everything else they do. Uh... maybe because to comply with the law, we have to enter into a retainer agreement, and provide a detailed explanation of the scope and extent of our representation which they have to sign? It was another circumstance where their response was basically, "That can't be right," because they think their engineering viewpoint gives them special insight into how everything in the world works.

I shudder to think what it's like to be married to an engineer--I can't see it working out unless the spouse is OK with always being wrong, and doing everything the way the engineer thinks it should be done.

25 Any Career, If You're Good At Adapting

26. Biomedical Engineering

MrTatas_ said:

Usually any degree that “sounds smart” people are only drawn to it to say they study it. First one that comes to mind is Biomedical engineering. They are mocked by electrical engineers because they can’t design more than basic circuits, and are mocked by mechanical engineers for similar reason with physical devices. And there’s also no job market for them without a higher degree. It is thee stereotypical sound smart but actually an idiot field.

perculaessss replied:

Well, duh. They are different degrees. A biomechanic job it's to connect the organic features with the mechanical ones, not make the latter from scratch. That's like mocking a electrical engineer because he doesn't know how to prepare a bacterial culture. And I didn't study any of those degrees, but related.

BoorishTome replied:

Tbf biomed as a discipline isn’t necessarily better in an area than an already existing major. They won’t design better surgical robots than a MechE, won’t design better wireless glucose monitors than an electrical engineer, won’t create better analytics assays than a chemist, won’t be able to commercialize drug production better than a chemical engineer, won’t create better biocompatible polymers than a materials engineer, etc.

It’s just a function of the poor structure of the degree, IMO it should either be only a graduate degree or it should be clarified to freshmen that it isn’t as practical engineering discipline as the other engineering degrees, and you will need to specialize to be employable.

My experience is that biomedical engineers end up in supportive engineering roles like quality, regulatory, sustaining and are never typically the lead engineers that make the calls during product development.

Actually, these seemingly brainy jobs don’t require much brain power. In theory, they do, but in practice, less intelligent people find themselves in jobs that require more intelligence.

And, while you’re enjoying this list of jobs, would you mind sharing jobs that you believe fit the above description in the comments below?

Maryjane