For the most part I am extremely easy going and have a very high tolerance for most everything. I am 67 years old and have never experienced even the most minor form of road rage. Yet I have a couple of triggers that just set me off. I think they are related.
Suppose we have a 3 way conversation going, it just happens to be about something I know about. One party is asking a question, the other party has little to no knowledge on the subject yet his opinion will be overwhelmingly accepted over mine. For some reason I take that very personal and feel highly insulted. I will very often have nothing to do with that person from that time on. The guy asking the question that is. I have no problem with the guy whose opinion was accepted.
Another trigger I had was at work ( retired now thank god) If I gave an employee specific instructions on a procedure to be followed, (usually a diagnostic procedure as I ran a truck shop) and the employee completely ignored the instructions I would have this overwhelming feeling that the shop was completely out of control. I would take it very personal as if the employee was telling me my opinion was shit.
Are things like this common triggers for anger? I don't do the best job of conveying my ideas and I am aware of this.
I feel the same way about the first case (someone ignoring my opinion about something I really know about). Can’t say about the second as it has never happened to me but sure sounds infuriating.
Both of those are similar. They represent a direct assault on your expertise. As adults and as skilled workers in our fields we each derive a lot of sense of self from our expertise in general and work expertise in particular.
That’s a lot of why if you ask somebody “What are you?” with no other context they’ll usually answer with their occupation rather than philosophy, ethnicity, religion, hometown, etc.
You’ve also demonstrated over the years a lot of expertise in, and pride about, your hobbies. Which again is all about mastery.
So its hardly surprising folks ignoring or discounting your mastery would be one of your hottest of hot buttons.
I get irrationally angry when people find out about something and loudly complain about how “It would have been nice if someone had told me about X”. Inevitably, there’s been 3 emails, it’s come up in two faculty meetings, and I personally mentioned it to them. But they didn’t listen because they didn’t see how it was immediately useful–and they were too busy nursing their indignation about all these stupid, pointless meetings to listen–and now it’s someone else’s fault that they didn’t know.
There’s one guy at work who is especially bad about this. If I try to explain anything to him, he starts sputtering with rage about how stupid the whole system is, how unfair everything is, how corrupt everyone is . . . and he won’t listen. Then, when he later doesn’t know something, it’s more proof that “they” are setting him up to fail and are also hideously incompetent. Cue more sputtering.
They don’t believe you. About something you KNOW is right.
Which can be processed mentally into “you are lying”. Which is bad enough. About something you’d bet your life is true…which just rubs salt into the wound.
In my case, people who do that are likely to also be patronizing in other ways, such as referring to me as “the girl” whereas my male coworkers are referred to by firstname or as Mr. Lastname. This particular “girl” is an engineer, already closer to 50 than 40, has more experience in her field (and several related ones) than the majority of her colleagues, but occasionally finds herself wishing for some bricklayer-sized hands…
OMG! I was up at my local neighborhood bar years ago. One guy brought up the tired old myth: “The reason why toilets spin around in the direction they do is because we’re in the northern hemisphere”
I tried to correct him. I wound up arguing with EVERYONE in that bar that this is indeed not true. I practically repeated every word said in Cecil’s article about the subject. Still did no good. These people were determined to remain ignorant on the subject. :smack:
I’m still a fan of the Straight Dope. But I am no longer a fan of fighting ignorance. It’s pointless.
It could had been way that Mr. or Ms. Knowitall gave the answer , was that person a loud mouth person , that like to have all the attention ? I have a neighbor like this he think he is Mr. Knowitall ! He want to give my dog
Milk Bones treats and tell my dog can’t eat 'wheat ’ Mrknowitall will yell
this is MILKBONE ! He think the cookies are 100% milk .
I would look at the person personally to try and understand why they need to
be right all the time even when they’re wrong. Try not to take this personal
and if you want to could try to talk the person asking the question when
Mr. or Ms. Knowitall it’s around .
AND they lend their ear to someone who you know is objectively wrong. So not only is the fact that you know the right and true answer being dismissed, the source of disinformation is being held to have higher credibility.
Funny thing is I might get a little aggravated at the know it all but most of my anger is directed at the one who took the bad advice. I accept a little responsibility in that as I tend to come off a little softer on the subject matter as not to sound like a know it all. The anger I feel is usually disproportionate to the perceived offense and I realize this so don’t usually say anything. I have been like this for as long as I remember. I have a feeling it goes back to something in my childhood I can’t recall.
I’d like to ask you if the conversation you are discussing happened in person or on the telephone. I’m guessing it might be different for a 3-way conversation over the phone versus in person.
Also, is it possible you see this as a problem related to gender? Do you think the reason one person’s opinion is accepted over yours has anything to do with the fact they are male and you are female?
I’m not trying to insinuate anything. I’m just trying to get a feel for what may be the root cause.
No particular conversation in mind but it is usually all males involved. It did happen sometimes when I was married and the wife would take someone else’s word over mine.
I would say 90% of the times it has occurred has been at work over work related issues. I don’t seem to take it too serious if I don’t have some kind of expertise in the area.
I spent my life as a mechanic by trade and one time when we were on vacation I had trouble with my truck. I thought instead of messing with it I would just pull into a garage and let them deal with it. I knew exactly what the problem was when I pulled in to the shop but out of respect for the mechanics I figured I would let them diagnose it themselves just as I would prefer to do at home. There diagnosis was way off and when I told them what I felt it was the wife sided with them immediately. I let that ruin the rest of my vacation even though I was vindicated and correct in my assessment. I got pissed off just now typing it and it was almost 40 years ago.
The more I think about it I know my Dad did this to me on almost every issue that came up. I think he may have been bullied at work a bit and then took it out on us.
For some reason ignorance has never upset me, probably because I accept that scientific and historical illiteracy is common. I was eating lunch one day at a temp job I had back in 1997 and five people at a table next to me were talking science. Science in the way that baboons would talk about it if they had complex language skills. One of them said, “If the Sun stopped working, we wouldn’t know it for years! Isn’t that scary?”
So I chimed in, “Actually, we’d know in about 8 minutes, because that’s how long light takes to reach the Earth from the Sun.” Now maybe that answer is also wrong, I don’t actually know how long it would take us to know the Sun had gone on the fritz, but at least my answer was based on knowledge I had gained in 3rd grade rather than the Weekly World News.
One of them says, “That’s nonsense! Don’t you realize how many millions of light years away the Sun is?!”
I responded, “The Sun is actually 93 million miles away.” Again, this is 3rd grade science. They scoffed at my ignorance. I wasn’t mad, just bemused.
Then they start talking about how a nuclear war would “blow up the Earth”. I chimed in, because I’m apparently a slow learner, “Actually, Earth might become uninhabitable, we aren’t really sure, but it would definitely not blow up. Humanity does not yet possess Death Star technology.” To which the same dude responded, “Dude, just one nuclear explosion is enough to SPLIT THE EARTH IN HALF!” Wow. i went back to my lunch and minded my own business, what I should have done from the start.
That kind of thing (people saying stupid things about something they don’t know anything about) drives me absolutely crazy, I’d have to change tables or something.
You know, when I first read this thread, I foolishly assumed you were female and were complaining about the males.
But, I now sympathize with you entirely. I don’t blame you one bit for being pissed off. I would be pissed off too. I can’t understand why a spouse would side against you like that. It sure would have ruined my vacation as well. I surely would not have felt at all friendly to her for the rest of that trip.
Well, as people here can attest, as educated as I am, I often think I’m smarter than I actually am and say things that turn out to be spectacularly wrong. So I don’t judge, I just hope people pick up a book now and then, or at least watch Discovery Channel or something.
I hate, hate, hate it when someone who is no more knowledgeable than I am starts to lecture me on something I already know and ignores me when I say “yes, I know all that”. That absolutely drives me crazy to an irrational degree.