Have you ever met an actual dumb person?

I keep running into maintenance jobs that want industrial controls and electrical experience which I don't have, just a strong background in mechanical repair and troubleshooting. The problem is that all these jobs are night shift, odd 12 hour schedules with weekends, or travel. So I'm stuck doing production work but on an 8 hour day shift schedule. My work was even offering a two year apprenticeship with 2 free years of school but you have to work 2 more years on nights after that on top of 12 hr days. It seems like it could be a fun trade, but doesn't seem worth the work/ life balance for me.

I've worked with some mentally challenged people in the past and through customer service. I'd much rather deal with someone with limited reasoning skills than someone who is genuinely intelligent. Intelligent people fail to see their own limitations and don't know when to be humble. Some of the dumbest people on this planet are academics, top of their field, highly educated. Those people don't know shit about anything because they're hyper focused on one teeny tiny aspect of the universe. At least the mentally challenged know that they have limited reasoning skills and are fairly skilled at asking for help and knowing their limitations.

Certain types of stupid people get mean around computers because they are frustrating to use if you don't understand what you are doing.

Computers are complex machines with a lot of options and no understanding of intent. When dealing with simple machines, someone can just poke random things until they get the outcome they want, limited understanding required. When talking to a person, the other person can recognize their question makes no sense and try to find their misunderstanding or explain in simpler terms.

A computer responds to these things with an error message they don't understand or don't care to understand. It won't use simpler language if they seemed confused. It won't try to calm them down if they start showing frustration. It will just keep doing what it's doing and make them feel stupid, leading to frustration and anger.

On the flip side, a lot of stupid people love LLMs because they will accept any insane input and will output a reasonable looking answer(correct or not) while showering them in validation.

Yeah those people can be super frustrating, and they also enjoy playing games, acting not so subtle superior sometimes. Its common that they are assholes, but not always.

I'm in a similar boat as you, as an M365, Azure, etc. Consultant, where most of the people I work with are CIOs, other IT people, and like, director level and above.

Even in those cohorts where you would think intelligence is generally above average you get a few.

I started out in help desk though, and occasionally run training classes. They're at all levels.