Over the last week I was contracted to work for an organization to help in validating people for an empowerment program. I had the privilege to meet over 500 people in a span of four days, I conversed with them and offered guidance while also taking care of attendance too.
I must say that this was one of the most eye opening periods for me, I learnt a lot of things from those 2-minute interactions about customer service, psychology, people study and so on. There were criteria given for by the organization for selection, one of them being age. I watched people lie about their age to be able to get the opportunity, now this is not far-fetched at all, what was far-fetched for me was seeing older women that I was sure were above the age limit by far still claim that they were eligible.
During this process that lasted for some days, invitations were sent out to candidates for their validation. This was another point where I had to make sure that those to be let in were actually invited, I had to ask over and over for proof of invitations, direct them to fill the right forms, fish out those who weren't invited and so on.
In all these things, I discovered something for myself:
Human intelligence is actually capped at an average level, lots of people are ignorant and really predictable. Now this is not necessarily a bad thing as it makes serving people easier. Imagine having to customize a product or service for each individual on the planet. Only a select few actually showed real smarts, which amongst them, some tried to play smart which ended poorly whereas others kept their cool and followed the process.
Everybody has a tinge of selfishness or greed. I wasn't really too surprised but seeing such numbers exhibit the same properties was really funny, a little bit saddening too considering the rigorous selection. Nobody wanted to sacrifice even the smallest chances for someone else.
People need help. This was probably the most sobering for me during my work. A lot of individuals are only waiting for some of these mentorship or empowerment programs, and I enjoyed the fact that I was part of something that is fostering human life and skills development. I think what gave me the most satisfaction was being in the right position to offer help even if it came with all kinds of complaints, insults and ungratefulness from the subjects of my help.
Humans will always be humans, and I believe it’s best to get to a level of knowledge and understanding of people from studies and research, this guarantees the best life as you can serve people better, avoid conflicts, work with different individuals at different levels and make the money that comes with people (for those in business).
The Penitself!