Stop me, if you've heard this one before...

Maybe I've mentioned this before, but Good God, I work with some thick people.

Not by choice. By which I mean, not by my choice, I'm sure at The University of Thick there's a list as long as my arm of people who'd love to work under my benign but invigorating regime...

I'm still in work by the way. 13 hours of nonsense so far today.

I've been away for the last week as I mentioned, so I've been running things by remote control using email and the occasional threatening phonecall.

However, I was back in the glorious, technicolour world of the Thick today.

And my God, they unlearnt a lot in one week.

I had three infuriating meetings at which people wandered around in leisurely circles, wondering about things and making half assed suggestions, that I know they will later be bitter and resentful about, when we decline to take their suggestion and use it...

I can hear them now in the kitchen, during one of their many breaks, muttering to each other, about how "I told them, we should be doing X and of course now we're doing Y and I'll get the blame"

Of course in this case, X would be the equivalent of having a quiet smoke on the forecourt of a garage and then stuffing the smouldering butt into the fuel tank.

They say in brainstorming there is no such thing as a bad idea.

Sadly, this could not be further from the truth. And bad ideas are a potent currency that the generators of cling to with a touching fondness, hoping that they can cash these crappy suggestions in at the altar of success.

Trust me when I say, I'm a lot closer to the altar and frankly the ideas you so fondly offer are worse than useless.

I sometimes have to literally bite my tongue to avoid shouting aloud "What is wrong with you people?"

The worst ones are the ones who just fail to get things done. You discuss something, you explain, you answer their questions, you listen to and deal with their objections and you get their agreement that this new idea is the best way forward.

Then, at the next meeting, or say for example if you had been out of the office for a week, at the next opportunity, you hear a cavalcade of complaints and moans about how they don't understand, how no one explained, or my favourite one "We tried that and it didn't work"

The notion that the way that they had approached it might be at fault, or that their execution was completely arseways, simply does not float through their heads.

I guess that is the most annoying thing. Thickness and Self Confidence seem to run together, hand in hand...

It must be a wonderful world for the Thick. They seem to suffer from no self doubt, or maybe they simply lack the ability to think about whether something is right or wrong.

If I could remove one category of people from the world, it would be the Self Confident Thick person... Then maybe I'd be home by now...