The Nature of Dumb

Recently, Nick has discovered a new source of intense stupidity in the form of a co-worker who was hired a few months ago (I'll call her D.O.). Setting out on an audit with her and their supervisor last week, he was mildy amused at the level of incompetence she displayed completing the work. Nothing stunningly noteworthy aside from her inability to perform any (and I mean ANY) task without the supervisor explaining the process in full detail to her, followed by 10 minutes of blank staring, then another inquiry on what she was supposed to do again. Repeat scenario at least three times all the while D.O. is moaning "I'm so dumb and old. I can't do this!" (she's 30 and actually has a degree). So we're not talking endearing Forrest Gump stupidity where she tried her hardest despite her lack of smarts - lady had already thrown in the towel.

After the hour of explanation, D.O. then continued to amaze by NOT doing the work and just filling out the equivalent of "Incomplete" in 50% of the cells on the excel spreadsheet that she was in charged of filling out, therefore making the supervisor have to redo all the work for her. D.O. also had an intense fear of talking to the clients to retrieve information and had actually on a few occurrences handed them HER work and told them to fill it out for her.

So then it got better when Nick realized that despite only being at the company for a few months, out of the three auditing jobs D.O. was assigned, she already requested to be off from TWO. The reason? On her first job, a person was "mean and unsupportive" to her and the client was bad (a rather strong opinion seeing that this is her FIRST client). So she didn't want to work with either person or client again. Something that pretty much the entire office knew (including the H.R.) because D.O. was so dumb she broke the Newbie Hire Rule and could'nt keep her mouth shut about how unhappy she was working with people who'd been with the company for 5+ years.

So mean co-worker joined their audit yesterday and Nick finds that "unsupportive" translates to making D.O. do one spreadsheet out of the three they assigned her and admonishing her for asking the client to fill out her OWN form. Things got really great when Nick and mean co-worker walked in on D.O. complaining and whining to the supervisor about mean co-worker.

So mini question: What kind of stupid is more tolerable? The delusional type where someone thinks they're greater than they are? Or the fully-acknowledged type where they wallow in their sorrow and refuse to do anything because of their lackings?