Let’s Talk About the Dead Weight Syndrome

Jared is smooth, polished, and charismatic. When I first met him at a party where ninety percent of the people were loud, I noticed he was different. The kind that doesn’t say much but prefers to study people. If you weren’t keen, you’d never notice him in a group setting.

The party eventually died. We all slid into our lives, only for Jared to pop up on my Facebook a while later. Facebook is good like that. Randomly showing us people we’ve bumped into even at random places.

Anyway, his silence at the party had piqued my interest — quiet people are hard to ignore. They’re like a scent that lingers long after you’ve left the room.

So, you can see why I didn’t object to the connection, right? Besides, isn’t this what Facebook is for, to forge friendships and connections?

But as I got to know him better, a window in my brain swung open, and I started to see all the nasty little character traits popping up like mushrooms.

There’s this meme used on social media, “You think you know someone…” It didn’t take long for me to have my “you think you know someone” moment. My someone = Jared.

I had one major discussion with my so-called charismatic friend, and it dawned on me that there wasn’t a shred of charisma in this dude. Nada.

Jared, fit the bill of the deadweight syndrome.

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So What Exactly Is the Deadweight Syndrome?

According to the urban dictionary, a dead weight person is:

A person that is usually useless in any sort of participation or action that will affect the action at hand.

A deadweight person is essentially useless. They don’t take any sort of action to effect change or make things better. They just are. Having them in your life becomes a burden rather than a source of enrichment.

With such people, you never know their real selves until you’ve allowed them into your life. From a distance, you never know how much power they have to drag you down because they seem like normal, nice people from the outside.

In fact, they seem like the very people you’d like to have in your life, and it’s not until they wear you out so much that you realize how skewed your judgment of them was.

People are not only complicated they are also not that easy to read. It takes time to realize that the friendship has gotten too heavy or is one-sided or that you’re being taken for a ride.

So based on my experience with Jared, here are the exact signs you need to look out for in a deadweight person.

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Signs That Someone in Your Life Is Dead Weight.

They never volunteer for any task but never miss an opportunity to find fault with your work.

Remember the event I first met Jared? It was through an organization that I was later asked to serve as the secretary.

When you’re a secretary, you work harder than the rest of the members. You’re physically and mentally engaged, but you also have to carve out time to prepare minutes or organize things here and there.

Here’s what ticked me off about Jared: He continually found fault with the work of my colleagues and myself despite never volunteering to take on any task.

Nothing was ever good enough for him.

The weird thing about deadweight people is their belief in perfectionism — despite not lifting a finger to contribute to said perfectionism. They just don’t have it in them to encourage the good efforts of others because they’re fueled by pride and ego.

It’s hard to do your best when deadweight people are always capitalizing on imperfections. At the end of the day, no matter how tenacious and relentless we are, we all can use a whisper or a good word in reference to our efforts.

You see these types of people everywhere.

If they aren’t in your workplace, looking down on your efforts as you work your way up the corporate ladder, they’re the high maintenance family members constantly finding fault with your cooking, parenting style, down to how you live your life.

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If you call them out, they fish for your mistakes and flaws and then focus on that.

Quoting my high school teacher, “If you look for mistakes and flaws, you’ll always find them.”

Deadweight people know this. Jared knew this.

When I called him out for throwing shade at the chairman’s decision-making, he turned on me and asked why I was still in the organization despite not being happy with a certain policy.

It was something small that didn’t warrant me leaving the organization, and deep down, I think he knew it. But he had to make the issue dramatic because it was his ammunition, his defense for being corrected.

When someone points out a flaw, they’re not assuming they’re flawless themselves, but deadweight people assume this is the case.

Part of being wise and humble is realizing and accepting the fact that someone doesn’t have to be perfect to correct you.

Wisdom dictates that we should always be working on improving ourselves even when the people who show us what we need to work on aren’t perfect themselves.

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Not only is nothing ever good enough for them, but they also never acknowledge the little positive things.

Jared didn’t like the venues we picked for the organization’s events — they were either loud or shady — despite all the background work that went into organizing these events.

If you’ve ever pulled off a function, you know all that goes into it — hours of planning, phone calls, liaising with people, and even getting the timing right.

It’s a lot.

And it consumes plenty of time for the organizers. And yet, none of this is ever good enough for deadweight folks. This goes back to the illusion of perfectionism that deadweight people carry.

Instead of showing you how you can navigate the obstacles stopping your project from becoming better, they always refer to something else that they feel is better than what you’re working on.

I’m a firm believer that your best should be enough if you’ve given it your all. You should celebrate it no matter who thinks otherwise.

But if you’re surrounded by deadweight folks, you need to work extra harder to feel good about your work for the constant highlighting of the imperfections.

With Jared, I quickly learned I’d never be productive or achieve significant feats as long as he was hovering in my life.

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They enjoy ganging up with people on the wrong side of the controversy.

This. It’s the classic trait of deadweight people.

They always need someone else to strengthen their resolve. They hunt for those without an opinion and recruit them to their side of the controversy.

Over time, Jared did precisely that. He found his gang — two other guys who disagreed with the organization’s membership policy. I never asked him why, but I imagine it made him feel powerful, as if he was standing for “something.”

When some people are wrong, they find it easier to find people to numb themselves with instead of stepping up to the truth because well, the truth is uncomfortable. It’s like walking with a pebble in the shoe.

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They’re among the first ones to take advantage of the sweat of others even as they find fault with it.

I don’t recall a time when Jared was ever on the planning committee of anything. Heck, he even had a problem with the membership fees, and yet, he always attended the events organized by the same “flawed” organization.

That was the funniest part.

You’d think that if someone is opposed to the way you run your project, they will build their own thing, right? Nope.

Deadweight guys don’t have out in them to build a project, mostly because they don’t have room to accommodate different views.

Teamwork makes things happen. You have to be willing to accommodate others without thinking that they don’t respect your opinions.

But these types of people don’t think this way. And yet, they never go away, they still hang around to enjoy the benefits of other people’s hard work.

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When corned by the truth, they turn abusive and lose objectivity in the matter.

My mom once told me, “Even when a horse stares death in the face, he never stops kicking. He knows it’s game over, but surrender is never an option.”

Deadweight guys do the same thing when they are served the truth.

Here’s the thing about the truth, it disarms us. We lose all defense because it dismantles all our assumptions.

Objective people swallow the humble pie and accept the new revelation. But deadweight people can’t stand being disarmed because they’re driven by ego and pride.

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When Jared and I had that sobering conversation, he resorted to arguing for the sake of it — despite knowing very well that his argument was dead in the water. The kicks of a dying horse.

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It’s the constant complaining that gets you.

Jared had become too big a complainer, and I wasn’t having it anymore. If you’ve been around a constant complainer, you know that they’re mostly talk and little or no action.

And there comes a time when you can’t stomach the negativity. Complainers are claustrophobic. Over time, you not only begin gasping for air, but you become desperate for it.

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Here’s What You Can Do if You Have a Deadweight Person in Your Life.

The best decision I made was to limit contact with Jared considerably. It dawned on me that I had wasted so much time trying to reason with him.

To be clear, I’m not saying this is the right thing to do, but I’m also aware that when a person gets to a certain age, it’s impossible to influence their attitude and mindset.

Deadweight people will not help you, empower you or enrich your life. You’ll be the one carrying them all the time without any positive outcome. They will use their energy to destroy rather than build.

At some point, you must learn to channel your attention to yourself and what builds you up. Anyone who has ever jumped ship this way can attest to the freedom it brings.

Deadweight is heavy. It’s not worth having these guys in your circle.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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