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Usually the phrase armchair quarterback is only thought of in the context of professional sports. You hear the term and you imagine someone who’s staring down diabetes or cirrhosis giving a drunken rant in a B-Dubs about why the play calling was trash. But everyday, people with normal jobs are given pointless suggestions and complaints by assholes and idiots that have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about. Below are the worst industries for armchair quarterbacking.
Meteorologist
Yesterday my friend asked me, “what do you think it’s like being a weatherman?” I answered, “Hell. It’s gotta be hell.” Local meteorologists’ lives are a barrage of worn out jokes and advice from people that lived their lives in the same town seeing the same weather, but have no more idea on what causes it than I do on what causes my phone to be a touch screen. They’re constantly blamed for ruining anything outdoors, as if somehow it’s the guy reading the data’s fault and not the fact that weather prediction is little more than legitimized voodoo. I get a little of this just working at a golf course. At any gathering of clouds I get, “is it gonna rain?” or, “nah it’s just a passing cell, I saw the way the clouds were forming this morning.” I couldn’t imagine hearing that every day.
Youth Sports
Friday Night Lights might have romanticized coaching, but it’s not all bombshell redhead wives and changing kid’s lives. You know there were more than a few times when Coach wanted to tell Buddy to fuck off because he wouldn’t get out of his ear with advice about the QB dilemma. Whether it’s the pay to play rec league or high school varsity, city youth sports is a gauntlet of parents and try hards with the playing time of Stephen Hawking and the opinions of Skip Bayless.
Corporate Customer Service
This is a big umbrella. I’d technically put my golf course under here back when we were corporately managed. But really these are your major corporations. Your call centers and insurance companies. If your boss is a billionaire on the Forbes list who will never know your name, much less take the advice Scott from OKC is screaming at you through the phone, this is your category.
Service Repair
I think this is pretty easily the worst industry for armchair quarterbacking. Doesn’t matter if it’s plumbing, auto repair, electric installation, construction, or HVAC, you’re going to be spending most of your day hearing people giving advice straight out of their ass. They’re not happy they called for your help so they’re going to make damn sure to get all that frustration out in the form of annoying suggestions. “Yeah, I think it’s the transmission.” “I’m not sure, I tried snaking the toilet a couple times, think there might be a leak behind one of the stud pipes.” “Man I could have done this in 15 minutes if I just had the tools.” If you’ve ever wondered why these guys are making $75-100 an hour in labor, this is why.
*Bonus: Women*
Multiple times a day I thank God that he created me as a male. There is no way in hell I could survive the world women live in, especially the female professional world. Guys, every time you throw your female coworkers a “you should smile more,” or any asinine comment on something you don’t know jack shit about, you’re armchair quarterbacking their gender. Stop it..
Image via YouTube / DELKUS
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BBisgard45
Golf Pro in B/CS TX trying to trick the PGA into certifying me to give swing advice for a living.
@BrianBisgard
This is cool and all, but what did you shoot this weekend?
Actually spent the weekend wade fishing off Port O’Connor so all I shot was lots of Lone Star Light
My dad is a meteorologist, the amount of math and calculating that goes into forecasting blows my mind. It really pisses me off when some dipshit who never graduated high school tells me how much of a dumbass weathermen are.
Okay but what about a LA weatherman? It’s legit like 75 and sunny 98% of the year
To be fair there is a difference between a meteorologist (an advanced statistician who develops the forecast) and a weatherman (the talking head that points to a green screen).
Also to be fair, it’s pretty hard for a weatherman to mess up enough that he or she is fired. The margin for error is pretty high.
Not only that, but they’re normally just not properly understanding statistics or probability.
A 33% of rain doesn’t mean it’s probably not gonna rain, it means there is a 33% chance, or 1 out of every 3 times the scenario. And every scenario is independent of all the other ones.
A 33% chance of rain doesn’t mean it rains 33% of the time per se. It means that if a 100 square grid is placed over a station’s viewing area it is most likely to rain somewhere within 33 of those 100 squares, not that it just rains in city X 33% of the time given certain conditions.
One that I always thinks gets overlooked is POTUS. I get it, they are literally the leader of the free world, so criticism comes with the territory, but these people are treated like total buffoons. Trump, Obama, W, Clinton…all the way back. Agree with them or not, their education, experience, and ability to surround themselves with people to help them win the position got them into office, yet the way they are treated you would think they are all bumbling idiots.
I’d expand that out to political professionals in general. As someone who works in politics and has direct contact with constituents, I can tell you that the vast majority of people have no idea what goes into making law.
Pretty sure we know how government works now thanks to House of Cards.
^
Wait, so you’re that all those uneducated shills protesting against Trump don’t actually know how to be a president better than him? Preposterous!
I can’t imagine the amount of comments women get during their lifetimes, about what they’re wearing, how they look, excercise, diet, doing their job and even taking their cars to get fixed. I get annoyed when people armchair quarterback my height, I can’t imagine it just coming with the territory of gender.
I follow Cheryl Scott on Insta and it looks like her life is going juuuuuust fine.
God damn
If I was a weatherman, I’d offer up little morsels of facts after my report just to give the people a little context and also distract them from the fact that I might be wrong about the weather even though they can look outside for themselves. For example, a nice touch would be “Hey, folks it’s probably going to rain today so bring a coat with you in case the 10 seconds that you actually get to be outside today is a little wet. Also, did you know that the cost of the bombs rained down on a random village hospital could have paid off the student debt crisis here in America? Okay, we’ll have a great day and don’t forget to keep working hard. Here’s Jerry with sports!”
I agree with this but I will continue to judge Friday Night Tykes: Steel Country forever
I quit watching Friday Night Tykes because of it
I’d like to add real estate agents to the list. If I hear “zillow said my house is worth more than that” one more time I’m going to throw a 98mph heater into someone’s backside
If real estate agents offered something that a web site didn’t, you’d have a point, but as long as they demand 5-6% of a multi-hundred-thousand dollar transaction but only act as a walking keychain they deserve all the hate.
Amen. The fact people are able to effectively predict the dang future using math and figures even *remotely* reliably is mind-blowing if you sit back and think about it.
Welcome to any actuary’s career. The issue isn’t so much the prediction itself as much as it is choosing the right assumptions, meaning it’s really all guess work.
My dad has coached grade schoolers for over 25 years and my aunt is the head of a diocesan sports league. The stories they have about parents is amazing, newsflash your kid has probably a 5% chance of playing in college and less than a 1% chance of going pro in any sport. Please stop yelling at refs and coaches when the kids are younger than 14.
I had parents of 7 year old kids get in my face thinking their kid is going to be the next Michael phelps. I know talent when I see it and it’s hard after the 20th time not to flat out tell parents their kid sucks.