Why does this trigger so much anger

[Aangelica]

@Philster

The last thing I probably raged about went something like this:

I am a recognized expert in X (an employment issue).

My nephew seeks my advice at a dinner/bday party… over dinner. He knows my expertise; he seeks it.

I have been contracted by Fortune 100 companies and was very successful because of my skill with X. It’s no in question.

My mother dismissed everything I said; she talked over me; she reference anecdotes from the 1950’s; she was factually wrong over and over again; my nephew pleaded to let me be heard; she told us she didn’t care anyway. I even addressed my mother, instead of my nephew. She was discounting everything I said and was projecting herself as the expert, despite not actually being employed by any actual company since about 1961. It was exhausting. She told my nephew to ignore all my advice.

I was… livid.
.

My mother - who has many fine qualities - does this about job searching. She has now been retired for almost 20 years, and before that had held the same public-sector job for 38 years previous (44 years if you count the same job in multiple states - she was an elementary school teacher). Thus, as you might expect, her job searching expertise is approximately 65 years old - that being the last time she, herself, had to look for a goddamn job - a job in what was then a highly-unionized field. Guess how much relevance this has to looking for random white-collar jobs in 2015. (If you guessed “less than zero”, you get a cookie.)

The last time I was unemployed (which lasted a grand total of four weeks, including the two-week vacation I allowed myself between ending one job and beginning the next and the two-week temp-to-hire I elected not to take the “to hire” on), she was seriously advocating that I should just start showing up at random law firms asking for an appointment with their hiring people. She would not understand that this tactic was actually less likely to get me a new job than joining an underwater basket weaving class at the Y. She apparently is unable to grasp the concept of either “online job hunting” or “placement firms”, and flat-out refused to accept the fact that your average law firm administrator, when hiring staff, is going to consider a walk-in to be possibly functionally insane and certainly not a good choice.

I gave up on talking to her about it and just changed the goddamn subject every time she brought it up until I got a new job.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@Charlie_Wayne

I can’t understand why a spouse would side against you like that.

My kids’ pediatrician is not just a professional pediatrician but a supremely qualified one at that. And he told my wife that when it comes to his own kids, his wife tends to distrust his opinion.

“A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home.”

[JRDelirious]

@Dogzilla

People know I am an editor. My family and friends know I’ve been working with language for 25+ years. If you need to know where a comma goes, you come to me. That is established. So I get white-hot livid angry if you come to me specifically because you know I have expertise in the matter and then you either: ignore what I told you, argue with me, or go with some non-expert’s advice. That tells me that you don’t really think I know my shit. And it’s disrespectful to ask for a tidbit of my expertise and then argue with me about it, as if I haven’t been answering that same goddamn question for 25 years. I get a little hot just thinking about it.
[ … ]
If you don’t think I know my shit, then why are you asking me?

Realization: they are not really asking for your expertise to inform them. They are looking for your expertise to validate them. They want to hear you tell them they are right, in whatever their preconceptions are, or to give them an answer they will like. Failing that they switch to making it about how the expert could not prove them wrong.

It never fails, five minutes later, one of the men will repeat the same goddamn thing and the other men will not only acknowledge him, but will act like he just said the most brilliant thing in the world and that he was the first person to think it up. THAT makes me stabby. But I tend to just walk away.

Oh yeah that one’s a beaut…

[Philster]

@Aangelica

My mother - who has many fine qualities - does this about job searching. She has now been retired for almost 20 years, and before that had held the same public-sector job for 38 years previous (44 years if you count the same job in multiple states - she was an elementary school teacher). Thus, as you might expect, her job searching expertise is approximately 65 years old - that being the last time she, herself, had to look for a goddamn job - a job in what was then a highly-unionized field. Guess how much relevance this has to looking for random white-collar jobs in 2015. (If you guessed “less than zero”, you get a cookie.)

The last time I was unemployed (which lasted a grand total of four weeks, including the two-week vacation I allowed myself between ending one job and beginning the next and the two-week temp-to-hire I elected not to take the “to hire” on), she was seriously advocating that I should just start showing up at random law firms asking for an appointment with their hiring people. She would not understand that this tactic was actually less likely to get me a new job than joining an underwater basket weaving class at the Y. She apparently is unable to grasp the concept of either “online job hunting” or “placement firms”, and flat-out refused to accept the fact that your average law firm administrator, when hiring staff, is going to consider a walk-in to be possibly functionally insane and certainly not a good choice.

I gave up on talking to her about it and just changed the goddamn subject every time she brought it up until I got a new job.

This is therapy in reading that. Hope it was therapeutic writing it.

[Dogzilla]

@JRDelirious

Realization: they are not really asking for your expertise to inform them. They are looking for your expertise to validate them. They want to hear you tell them they are right, in whatever their preconceptions are, or to give them an answer they will like. Failing that they switch to making it about how the expert could not prove them wrong.

Well, thank you! It didn’t actually occur to me that that could very well be about the other person’s need to be right. I am so naive (or something); when people ask me things, I believe they genuinely want to learn something new. :smack:

@JRDelirious

Oh yeah that one’s a beaut…

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@Dogzilla

But what the OP is talking about – and I think it happens to everyone – I take it as disrespectful and even edging into gaslighting territory.

I get that a lot with grammar/language/spelling questions. People know I am an editor. My family and friends know I’ve been working with language for 25+ years. If you need to know where a comma goes, you come to me. That is established. So I get white-hot livid angry if you come to me specifically because you know I have expertise in the matter and then you either: ignore what I told you, argue with me, or go with some non-expert’s advice. That tells me that you don’t really think I know my shit. And it’s disrespectful to ask for a tidbit of my expertise and then argue with me about it, as if I haven’t been answering that same goddamn question for 25 years. I get a little hot just thinking about it.

I might do something along these lines at times. But I feel like I have some justification.

Because many times when I’m asking the opinion of an “expert” it’s because the question is not a simple one but has a nuance or twist to it which makes it unusual. And it sometimes happens, on speaking to the “expert”, that the expert spits back what seem to be platitudes or standard FAQ responses that I already know, and which don’t demonstrate that they’ve grasped the specific nuance that I’m focusing on. So I have a choice of either leaving it as is and being no further ahead than I was, or reiterating the reason why this case might be unique and seeing if they can address this aspect of the matter. Which choice I opt for can depend on the circumstances, e.g. the extent to which I’m imposing on the person’s time etc.

And the thing is that there have been many many times when this has resulted in the answer changing. Sometimes experts get asked the same questions so frequently that they don’t really pay close attention when they’re being asked something that seems superficially similar to the same standard question that they’ve been asked so many times before, and when you point out that your question is about a unique aspect of this particular case they focus on that and change their response. [It’s also sometimes the case that experts only know the answers to the standard questions off the top of their heads, and need more research for the more complex matters.] But there are also times when the added nuance is only meaningful to the lay mind and doesn’t change the answer, and it’s possible that I’ve irritated an expert or two along the way.

[Aangelica]

@Philster

This is therapy in reading that. Hope it was therapeutic writing it.

I chalked it up as “one of those things” and made a mental note not to discuss job searching with my mom if I can possibly help it. It was fairly maddening at the time, though, no lie.

Mostly, I let it go because my mom then (and now) is suffering under more stress and chaos than any one person should ever have to endure as the sole caretaker of my father with advanced Alzheimer’s and is therefore probably entitled to minor delusions about her qualifications as a job-search expert. Fortunately, nobody other than me in the family has been unemployed in the past 18 months so it hasn’t come up again

[Dogzilla]

Aangelica: Don’t feel too badly. When I was first graduated from college, during a recession, I could not find a job in my field to save my life. The correct answer was: Move to a bigger city where they have the industry I was interested in. My small town did not afford many professional opportunities in my chosen field of work.

My dad, a True Believing Mormon, was a tool-and-die maker. He didn’t go to college. He was in a skilled trade, for which he’d done an apprenticeship in the early 1960s. My stepmonster was a high-school drop out and at the time, worked on an assembly line in a factory. Neither were educated, computer-savvy, nor had either one ever had a white collar job where you sit at a desk all day and wear fancy clothing. (Fancy to them – they went to work in jeans.) So he had less than a clue how to look for a fancy office gig. My stepmom’s advice was to go down to the local State Employment office… where they have factory gigs and maybe some skilled trade/manual labor gigs. Being completely clueless because I’d been raised by these people (later in my adult life to be known as “a pack of wolves”), I marched down there to the State employment office with my little resume in hand. You should have seen the employment lady’s face. What newly minted college graduate seeks factory work with her journalism degree? Seriously?

So I found myself crying in frustration one day, while sitting at my dad’s dining room table, perusing the classifieds for a job. (Hint: There was, and still is, no place to work in my hometown unless you are in food service, hospitality, retail, or healthcare. There are no factories anymore and there are no companies full of people in fancy clothing sitting in cubicles. Not that kind of town.) My dad told me that, although he knew I didn’t want to hear it, the ONLY way I’d find a job is if I started going back to church, paying my tithing (with WHAT?), and praying.

Seriously. He suggested prayer as a viable way to find a job. Prayer. :: face palm ::

I ended up going to the temp agency and getting a cushy data entry gig in a big printing house, so I got to wear fancy clothes and sit at a desk in air conditioning. I also extended the previous summer’s unpaid internship and hosted special events for a nearby TV station (an hour away was “nearby”), and pulled a weekends third shift factory gig inspecting tiny steel mufflers for proper braise meltage. I did all that for six months until I finally just packed up my car and moved to Florida where I had a friend who needed a roomie to split expenses. I arrived in Florida on a Friday afternoon. I started a cushy, fancy-clothes office gig in my field on the following Tuesday. My friends had all come from white-collar families and helped me figure out how to find a job. And also, they set up an interview for me on Monday morning, which taught me that, on the professional level, it’s pretty much all about who you know and stay in touch with.

[Dogzilla]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

I might do something along these lines at times. But I feel like I have some justification.

Because many times when I’m asking the opinion of an “expert” it’s because the question is not a simple one but has a nuance or twist to it which makes it unusual. And it sometimes happens, on speaking to the “expert”, that the expert spits back what seem to be platitudes or standard FAQ responses that I already know, and which don’t demonstrate that they’ve grasped the specific nuance that I’m focusing on. So I have a choice of either leaving it as is and being no further ahead than I was, or reiterating the reason why this case might be unique and seeing if they can address this aspect of the matter. Which choice I opt for can depend on the circumstances, e.g. the extent to which I’m imposing on the person’s time etc.

And the thing is that there have been many many times when this has resulted in the answer changing. Sometimes experts get asked the same questions so frequently that they don’t really pay close attention when they’re being asked something that seems superficially similar to the same standard question that they’ve been asked so many times before, and when you point out that your question is about a unique aspect of this particular case they focus on that and change their response. [It’s also sometimes the case that experts only know the answers to the standard questions off the top of their heads, and need more research for the more complex matters.] But there are also times when the added nuance is only meaningful to the lay mind and doesn’t change the answer, and it’s possible that I’ve irritated an expert or two along the way.

Well, I usually start with the terse FAQ answer and if pressed, like you said you do sometimes, then I’d lead with, “Well, okay this is more nuanced than that, but you have to remember that the correct answer depends on which style guide we’re using as our source reference book, where you stand on the Oxford Comma controversy, and about 100 other considerations that make this not a black and white answer.” If you’re still interested in the nuanced answer after that, I will talk your damn head off until you’re sorry you asked. :o

[MandaJo]

We could probably start a thread “What are you an expert at but no one will god damn listen?” For me, it’s college admissions advising. I spend a ridiculous amount of time working with college applications. I know more about the new SAT than anyone who hasn’t signed confidentiality waivers with College Board. I go to conferences and present on this crap. But when it comes to college admissions, people CANNOT BELIEVE that their own experiences, 20, 40, 60 years ago are are not vitally, incredibly relevant. Furthermore, virtually everyone looks at their own college experiences as the best of all possible worlds, so whatever they did, they think that’s the best course for anyone, whatever their aptitude and financial resources. It’s even worse if they read half an article in the NYT six years ago. T

[LSLGuy]

@JRDelirious

Realization: they are not really asking for your expertise to inform them. They are looking for your expertise to validate them. They want to hear you tell them they are right, in whatever their preconceptions are, or to give them an answer they will like. Failing that they switch to making it about how the expert could not prove them wrong.
…

This is much more common than more literal folks like myself & the OP think of.

My MIL is that way. She’s made up her mind to do X. So she’ll ask me what she ought to do. If I agree with X she does it. If instead I tell her X is not good and Y is better because of A, B, & C then … she’ll still do X.

In either case it was essential to get my opinion first though. And she really values my input, or so she says. I do know she rarely does something significant without asking me and/or her daughter first. But we’re each batting zero on getting her to actually change any of her plans. Whether we say yeah or nay she does it anyhow.

Validation is the thing she needs.

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

@Dogzilla

Many, many times, I’ve been the only woman in a conversation with three or more people and I interject something that I think added a little value to the conversation. If it’s all men I’m talking to, sometimes, the men will completely ignore me as if I hadn’t even spoken. I’ll look around and note that not one person I’m talking to even looked at me to acknowledge that I just spoke. It never fails, five minutes later, one of the men will repeat the same goddamn thing and the other men will not only acknowledge him, but will act like he just said the most brilliant thing in the world and that he was the first person to think it up. THAT makes me stabby. But I tend to just walk away.

This happened a lot when I was a IT Consultant. Companies would pay me big bucks to come in and make suggestions for improving their systems. Often the same suggestions that they had ignored when their employees had made them.

I remember one case on a short term assignment (2 weeks) for an overview and general direction for the system. I spent about 2/3rds of that time reviewing the system and interviewing the users and the current IT staff that was maintaining the system. Once we got acquainted, the current maintenance programmers was quite generous with their ideas for improvements, even giving me copies of memos they’d written proposing changes (often from several years ago). In some cases, during mainetnance work, they had even programmed in ‘hooks’ that were needed for some of these improvements.

Then I spent the remaining 1/3 of the time writing up my report & recommendations. Many/most of them were taken directly from comments or suggestions from the current staff. On the last day, the boss wanted me to give a presentation of my report to him & higher-ups. He also made the current staff attend this. The presentation went pretty well, and the higher-ups seemed to agree that it was worth funding a project to implement these improvements. Then the boss said "*He was only here 2 weeks, and came up with all these sendible improvements to our system. * (looking at current staff): And you guys have been working on this system for years!" I just looked at them, and rolled my eyes in silent apology. I tried to say that much of the credit for this was due to their cooperation, but that comment was obviously dismissed.

Afterwards, I treated the current staff (minus their boss) to pizza & beer at a local place, and apologized profusely for the way they were treated. They were actually OK with it; said they were glad that now something might actually be done to improve this system. Frankly, I didn’t see why they put up with it, so I asked. They said that the most junior of the programming staff had about 4-3/4 years on the project, while no manager had lasted over 18 months. So they could put up with this, expecting that the latest manager would soon monve on elsewhere.

[septimus]

I’m glad to see many other Dopers get the same irrational anger at being contradicted as I do!

I get irritated in real life when my own limited expertises are questioned. It’s irrational since I know much better than them what an idiot and what a savant I am.

It’s doubly irrational on this message board where very few even know my real name, but I get very irritated here too.

[John_Mace]

I get more puzzled than angry. But if someone simply won’t stop insisting they are right about something that I am certain they are wrong about, I will offer to be them $1,000. That usually shuts them up. If it’s family around the Thanksgiving table, though, it’s best to just let it go.

[kiz]

@Philster

This is therapy in reading that. Hope it was therapeutic writing it.

I read it and thought, HOLY SHIT THAT’S MY HUSBAND AND HIS MOTHER.

I could add more but I won’t. I don’t want to work myself up into a froth at this hour of the morning.

But yeah, therapy on both their ends would help but of course neither one will hear of it.

[kiz]

@LSLGuy

This is much more common than more literal folks like myself & the OP think of.

My MIL is that way. She’s made up her mind to do X. So she’ll ask me what she ought to do. If I agree with X she does it. If instead I tell her X is not good and Y is better because of A, B, & C then … she’ll still do X.

In either case it was essential to get my opinion first though. And she really values my input, or so she says. I do know she rarely does something significant without asking me and/or her daughter first. But we’re each batting zero on getting her to actually change any of her plans. Whether we say yeah or nay she does it anyhow.

Validation is the thing she needs.

My MIL is the same way. All my husband’s siblings play along with this to appease her. I have no idea if she knows they’re just appeasing her. Nevertheless, they play along and everything’s hunky dory until the next skirmish.

My husband doesn’t get any of this. He doesn’t see the value of validating her when it’s so obvious she’s WRONG and everyone else knows she’s WRONG so he not only gets upset at her but also at his siblings. I’ve been on the fringes of a few blowouts and it’s not pretty. And yeah, as I said in another post, therapy would be very helpful but of course it’s automatically dismissed.

[Aangelica]

@kiz

I read it and thought, HOLY SHIT THAT’S MY HUSBAND AND HIS MOTHER.

I could add more but I won’t. I don’t want to work myself up into a froth at this hour of the morning.

But yeah, therapy on both their ends would help but of course neither one will hear of it.

The thing is, generally my mom is a great person - she’s one of my closest friends over and above being my mother. There are just a few topics of conversation about which is it Just Not Worth It to get into a discussion with her. Finding a job, her current diet, and whatever medical fad she’s presently enamored of is pretty much the list actually.

Over the course of several really very frustrating decades, I’ve learned to just make appropriate non-committal noises when one of these topics finds its way to us and then change the subject as quickly as possible to something else. And to just let it go. It is simply not possible to either change her mind about one of these things, or to convince her she’s gotten unreliable data or doesn’t really know as much about the topic as she thinks. I know. I’ve tried. God, how I’ve tried. All trying does is make both of us unhappy with the other - with at least some justification on both sides. Best just to let it go.

I mentally chalk it up as a quirk and go on about my business, secure in the knowledge that I am totally justified in ignoring any advice she might give me on those topics. To be scrupulously fair, while she feels compelled to give the advice, she’s not offended if we don’t take it.

[Velocity]

@HoneyBadgerDC

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.

It makes you angry because truth is being overruled by non-truth or less-than-truth. That’s a perfectly legitimate reason to be angry.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

I doubt if that’s it.

The test would be if you see someone doing the same thing to someone else. Do you get as angry and frustrated then?

[OffByOne]

@Dogzilla

There’s a whole other situation that I think is more of a gender dynamic and that seems maybe a little bit different from what we’re talking about here. Many, many times, I’ve been the only woman in a conversation with three or more people and I interject something that I think added a little value to the conversation. If it’s all men I’m talking to, sometimes, the men will completely ignore me as if I hadn’t even spoken. I’ll look around and note that not one person I’m talking to even looked at me to acknowledge that I just spoke. It never fails, five minutes later, one of the men will repeat the same goddamn thing and the other men will not only acknowledge him, but will act like he just said the most brilliant thing in the world and that he was the first person to think it up. THAT makes me stabby. But I tend to just walk away.

If you are one of the males in the conversation, you can make big brownie points with the women by saying, “Well, as Sharon just said, ‘…’”