random thoughts – Day 1,208 – (Saturday) – competence

The first chapter of my grownup work life was a six-year stint in banking that began a couple months after graduating from Fitchburg State. During that time, there was a work seminar at the Fay Club, a private dinner-social club in a gorgeous building in Fitchburg. It was my first time in the Fay Club. My people were not Fay Club people. It was decades before I was in there again.

There was an abundance of ethnic- and religious-based social clubs in Fitchburg including the Franco American, British American, Friends of Saima Park, St. Joseph’s, South Fitchburg Social Club, Eastwood Club, Knights of Columbus, and more that escape me. We were not members of anything except for our church, where we avoided all the social situations available, and briefly, the YMCA.

The seminar at the historic and elegant Fay Club was led by a guy from Connecticut who commented on the absence of luxury vehicles he observed during his time in our city. He seemed to suggest that nobody in our city was of the same fine caliber as him. As for the seminar, I remember the lecturer's apparent disdain for the working-class roots of our city and absence of vehicular signs of wealth and status, and one specific segment of the workshop.

The seminar leader lectured about the psychological concept of the four stages of competence and how people could operate at different levels of competence. There is unconscious incompetence, where someone doesn’t know what they don’t know; conscious incompetence, where one knows they don’t know something and works to correct the deficit; conscious competence, where people know things, but really have to work at it on a conscious level; and unconscious competence, where people have skills that have become second nature and can be executed while doing other things. 

Today, a trip was taken to the Habitat ReStore in Billerica to look for a file cabinet. In preparation, the small space in the office was to be measured. It was already done a week ago, but in a possible instance of some form of incompetence, the paper with the dimensions was lost.

When I went to remeasure the space, I couldn’t find the tape measure. It wasn’t in the kitchen drawer, on the desk, on the counter, on the dining room table or the kitchen table, or in the tool bag. I was feeling quite consciously incompetent.

Before heading upstairs for a yard stick, I went into my purse for a pen. That’s where I found the tape measure. Apparently, some level of unconscious competence and trip planning had kicked in earlier, then was followed by amnesia (or senility). Measurements were taken. For the record, no suitable cabinet was found.

While out, Winston’s weekly chicken was procured and Marshall’s next to Market Basket was checked for a cabinet or shelving unit. After supper, the lawn was mowed. A file cabinet was ordered online and will arrive in several days. Competence levels were on display all over the place today, which were rewarded with a dish of ice cream. It’s important to celebrate life’s adulting victories.