Humans liked to wish that when they encountered aliens, they'd somehow be smarter faster stronger more capable than them.
Yes, it turned out humans were on the road less taken. But not in a good way. All earth animal life relied on neurons for signalling, with propagation speeds between 1 and 100 meters per second. Pretty much all other life in the universe had evolved to use metal wires, so coordination signals were near light speed. Their thinking cycles were also far faster, in the MHz to GHz range vs about 20Hz for humans. Aliens typically thought less in parallel though. If you gave everyone a minute to think, some aliens were smarter than humans and some dumber. Humans did not stand out that way.
This all didn't matter too much as long as humans and aliens kept light-seconds apart. But in close proximity humans were essentially standing still. The only way humans could survive unharmed was to have the aliens bear them no ill will, in fact, for them to be actively protecting any humans nearby.
We weren't the universe's speedsters. We were the universe's starfish.
This was in response to a prompt on rWritingPrompts, "humans the newest species on to join the GA turned out to have a 2.5 second faster reaction time then galactic standard"