Competence, baby

Have you ever met someone that was so competent they were sexy? This sounds kind of ridiculous at first, but I reckon that if you give it some thought, the answer might be yes.

At lunch time today I went to pick up some contact lenses from my optometrist. The receptionist there is a perfect example of this phenomenon. Now, I’ll admit, it doesn’t hurt that she’s actually also quite physically attractive. But really, there are plenty of good looking people out there with whom I can keep my lust at a controllable level. When I talk to this receptionist, I just want to vault over the counter and get busy amongst the Medicare forms.

Today, I walked in and she said ‘Hi Andrew! You’re here to pick up your contact lenses, right?’. I should explain that it’s been three months since I was last in the store, and six months since I’d seen this girl. She wouldn’t have known me from a bar of soap, but she knew who had orders waiting for collection, and she’d obviously read enough of my details to know I was a 23 year old male. She had done enough preparation and was intelligent enough to put two and two together. She picked up my contacts from where they were waiting in a neat pile with a bunch of others, and chatted with me as she processed my payment.

This description doesn’t fully capture the aura of professionalism this girl was displaying. It’s just something you can tell about a person when they have complete confidence in their ability to do their job well; and when they know that you know it too. Add to that a cheerful but efficient manner, and that, people, is someone who’s so competent they’re sexy.

Now if you agree with me that competence can indeed be sexy, this raises some interesting implications. You might be tempted to think that as a result, intelligent people should have an inherent advantage in appealing to the opposite sex. Well, clearly that ain’t always necessarily so. For a start, if they’re operating outside their field of expertise, they’ve got no advantage whatsoever. It also generally only has an effect when you’re providing a service for someone else. That basically limits it to a work context. A possible exception is, say, if you cooked a really awesome meal at your house for a dinner guest, but in the main, it’s a job thing.

Even at work, even when providing a service face to face, directly to another human being, the ‘sexiness of competence’ may not be working for you. As an obvious example, consider the much-maligned hypothetical IT Professional. He (for it is almost always a he [sorry Kate]) is certainly intelligent. For the sake of the argument, let’s also assume that he is in fact quite good at his job. Does he reap the benefits of the sexiness of competence? Almost certainly not. Here are some possible reasons why:

• He is surly and arrogant. Remember, the sexiness of competence relies on a cheerful but efficient manner.
  
• While he’s good at his job, the person he’s helping is in no position to appreciate this. A lay person has trouble differentiating good IT service from bad IT service, largely because the person he’s serving is probably incapable of understanding what it is the IT person is doing. This is exacerbated by the fact that IT guys generally are bad communicators, and can’t be arsed explaining what it is they’re doing.
  
• When I pick up my contact lenses, the resolution is quick, and the outcome is exactly what I’d hoped for. The receptionist has done everything I could have asked of her (desk sex aside). In contrast, provision of IT services is complicated, and it rarely results in an instant, completely satisfactory outcome.

But perhaps the biggest limiting factor to the power of sexy competence is that, for most people, when they’re at their most competent, they’re at work. And at work, many people are not in a position to be making moves on their customers.

Sorry IT guys, it looks like you need that gym membership after all.