And in the beginning

Since I have decided to start a blog dedicated to showcasing stupid people getting ahead, I would like to clarify a few things.

I am no rocket scientist.  I have not, nor ever will, find the cure for cancer.  I have not solved math equations that have gone unsolved for decades before me.  I will not draft the perfect legal brief freeing groups of oppressed people from tyranny.  .  No.  I’m yet another cog in the wheel who’s spent more than enough time commiserating with friends and family about people in power making bad decisions and being rewarded.  And then doing it all over again.

I’m fairly sure it all started years ago when I made the both best and worst employment decision of my life and took a job in the airline industry.  Not, mercifully, as anything in the air, but on the customer service side of things.  The job was bad.  I mean, bad, bad.  When you weren’t dealing with the traveling public – en masse – you were surrounded by grossly incompetent supervisors and managers.  These will, undoubtedly, comprise more than enough posts later but suffice to say I’ve seen badgers with more going on then some of those I “reported to” while serving my time there.

Since that time, I’ve been fascinated with the concept of Failing Upwards - the act of failing and being rewarded.  Many of the people I have seen advance in their careers are people I wouldn’t feel safe leaving my pet rock with for the weekend.  And I’m not alone.  Conferring with friends from all professional walks of life, I am constantly reminded that failing upwards is not a unique concept and instead something all of us routinely experience.  It’s a maddening phenomenon watching the incapable advance. 

Failing Upwards is the vehicle to vent and to turn the phenomenon from painful to funny.  Kinda.

This is going to be fun!

Inconceivable

"I do not think that word means what you think it means." - The Princess Bride

While I feel I should start the blog off with an uproarious example of failing upwards, I feel compelled to do the opposite and begin with the Inconceivable Feature. Named after the great line in The Princess Bride where Inigo Montoya tells the great criminal Vizzini that he doesn't think the word he's using means what he thinks it does (since everything he says is inconceivable keeps happening) this feature is dedicated to all of those who routinely misuse and mangle the words we hold so dear.

I have a colleague. We'll call him Tom. I suspect that, in time, Tom will become a Failing Upwards star for his continued slaughter of the English language. There is not a time when he is speaking that he is not saying "um, like, you know, um, like, you know" - all together like that and couching every single sentence. One of my personal Tom favorites, however, is his constant use of "In any cases". You know!

In any cases, the shipment won't be here by Thursday like we'd hoped.
In any cases, I'm allergic to peanuts anyway.
In any cases, I hate proper english.

No matter how many times people have attempted to use the singular phrase correctly with him, he continues to make "case" plural. Even more? Tom fancies himself rather a brainiac, gifted with an extensive vocabulary, which only serves to heighten the hilarity.

Who's your Tom (or Toms, goodness knows there are more!) and what words are they slaughtering?

Failing Upwards. A Working Definition.

The act of failing at a task and being rewarded.

See: most CEOs, many of our colleagues and even more of our superiors.