Viewpoint
'The dumb' act means avoiding work
This was the last straw, Kate already had her hands full with lots of work and when she was asked to organise the annual company dinner, she was flummoxed and did not know how to react. She was thinking of a way out of this responsibility, and she suddenly recalled her teenage years and how she would put up a dumb act whenever her mum asked her to do some chores. A brainwave hit Kate; she decided to follow some of these tactics to evade this additional responsibility.
We all know that learning something or acquiring new skills takes a lot of time but learning to refuse doing things and pretending to be dumb is not that hard. Pretending to be incompetent is not a new skill to learn, we do it in our teenage years. Just like Kate when your mum asked you to do some chores I am sure you would have claimed to be too busy or simply said that you did not know how to do that particular task. Recall the yarn of being a novice that you always played out when your parents or teachers wanted you to do some additional work? You continue practising this 'incompetence' in college and even after you get married. Whenever your spouse asks for some help, you tend to escape by voicing the negative outcomes of your handling the job.
See it is not that difficult. But wait a minute; feigning incompetence at the workplace does require a little more practice. Pretending to be incompetent is a strategy that succeeds in helping one avoid the work one does not want to do. It works on all levels of the hierarchy because for the junior levels pretending to be incompetent can be their way of getting back at the senior staff (the manager cannot take them for granted and has to find someone else to do the job) For the senior staff pretending to be incapable of certain tasks is one way to remind others that they are into higher things and cannot be bothered with mean tasks.
Feigning to be incompetent is a charade one can play everyday to avoid unpleasant and time-consuming tasks. But the problem is the person who is ultimately assigned that task can most probably see through your trick. One encounters this kind of charade, especially if one contacts a call centre with a problem, you are transferred from one department to another and you keep repeating your complaint, and ultimately you are back to square one and transferred to the person who spoke to you in the first place.
One can see this charade played out by those who claim to know nothing about operating a copier, fax machine, fix a problem in their PC or even operate the coffee machine. Such employees wring their hands in despair when it comes to operating these machines and higher the position one is in the more incapable one becomes of doing such tasks, because one claims to have bigger things on hand and thats probably why they have secretaries.
The eventual result of this charade is that someone in the team is called to help the particular person. Doing so entails the risk of helping that person forever, because he will never be willing to learn and refusing to help him entails the risk of being called a non-team player. Ultimately, if the person who helps is making a good job of it then, he will be assigned that task forever.
According to Robert Sutton, professor of management science at Stanford University pretending to be incompetent is one way in which the lower rung of employees can tell their seniors that they have certain skills which are needed for the running of the organisation and therefore should be valued.
So the next time somebody puts up a dumb act at your workplace, pretending to be incapable of doing what they actually can do, instead of blowing the whistle, maybe you can learn a thing or two from them, provided you are not the one asked to do their job.
HEMA GOPALAKRISHNAN
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