Know-It-Alls

We all encounter these people and I'd say 99% of us here are guilty of acting like a total asshole at times.

I seem to attracted people in both my professional and personal life that have learned just enough to get by but not enough to actually make a difference. And it's these types of people that insist that they know everything. I believe that having a limited knowledge of a wide range of subject is more dangerous then just being flat out dumb as roadkill.

These are the people that have to interject their convoluted ideas and half-truths into every conversation. Talking about Bob Marley and they'll give you the number of people that also died of cancer that originated in their big toe in the year 1981. Discussing Tom Hanks and why he would ever do the stupid DaVinci Code movies and they interrupt with a story about the Masons and what they're really all about. Which of course leads to where Jimmy Hoffa is.

The guy that insists that he knows all about computers because he successfully checks his email from his Blackberry every four minutes.

Played sports in high school? You now have the right to tell every coach and player in sports history that they're doing it all wrong.

Were you in you're high schools production of Fiddler on the Roof? Well, awesome cause I have a ton of question about music theory and Jewish culture.

I've been thinking about adding a nice redwood deck to my backyard. I better find someone that took shop class in high school and owns a hammer.

Do you watch NASCAR cause I'm shopping for a new car and I need someone to help me decide.

And now because it's fucking everywhere...

Have you seen a couple seasons of Top Chef? Cause even though I spent tens of thousands of dollars on culinary school, spent the last 15 years of my life in 120 degree kitchens burning myself, cutting off hunks of my hands, and draining myself to the point of collapse to perfect what I do as a job... not a hobby... I'm sure you know more about cooking then I do.

What types of people do you encounter? Tell me your stories.

 

Well... I run into experts, and I tend not to be impressed too much by them. I was one, and the story of how I got to be one is why experts don't impress me.

Many years ago, when electronic spreadsheets were first coming out, there was a second version of one for mini-computers from Digital Computers. I was asked to review it, and I did. I found an odd issue with one of the new features that ended up corrupting the spreadsheet file so that you lost your work. I fiddled around, and could reproduce the error, and could get around it with a rather clunky procedure. I went to our tech support people, and we called software support in Atlanta and were told that this was a known issue that hadn't been addressed yet. I gave them the work-around and went home. That was Wednesday afternoon.

Thursday morning I got a call from another office from a person who had run into the same issue. When I heard the error message he was getting I told him what he was doing, and that the file was useless now and we hadn't had a chance to warn users about the problem, but I could give him a way to get around it. He thanked me profusely, said no, he was just playing with some of the new features and didn't need the file, but that it was really nice to chat with someone who really knew his stuff.

So remember, experts are generally just people who made your mistake, yesterday.

 

I run into people that complain way too much.

 

I just ran into Jimmy Hoffa.

 

Oh come on. My rants will always be funny. Don't even pretend you didn't laugh. Sourpuss...

 

Know-it-all-ism runs in my dad's side of the family. I can recall several heated arguments (I'm right! No, I'M right!) at family functions, but the best was at my grandma's 80th birthday party. My dad is an amateur bird watcher. One of his sisters saw a bird and came to him to ask what it might be. Another sister insisted what my dad said was incorrect because of x, y, and z, and pretty soon all three were going at it. My grandma came in, told them all to shut up, calm the hell down, and banished them all to different rooms. I can only imagine how many times she actually had to do that while her 10 children were growing up.

No consensus was reached on the species of the bird.

 

TRUST ME I"M A DOCTOR....famous last words

 

I agree with Martian's analysis of people the I.T. field. The only problem I see is that when I want to apply for an I.T. job, they all require the person to have a variety of certifications, which may look impressive on a resume, but are pointless once you are in the field.

Working in a health care facility, surrounded by people 15-20 years older than I am, they think my answers to I.T. related questions are wrong and think their guess to what is the problem is correct. I just pretend to agree with them and quietly fix the problem with the correct solution.

Example:

I performed an update on a major nursing application, which always provides a new series of problems that will be fixed in a future update, but they like to blame it on other programs.

D.O.N: The antivirus software is causing the nursing application to freeze at random intervals, please uninstall it from all the computers in the building. We don't need an antivirus program.

Me: Alright. How about we uninstall the program from your computer and we can see if the problem continues or if it resolves the issue.

I temporary uninstalled the antivirus program from his computer, but the problem continued, so he came to the conclusion (which I already mentioned) that the latest update was the cause of the random freeze issue.

 

The other side of this coin is equally, if not more frustrating. I helped a friend with a computer issue, back in the 3.1 days. To this day, I'm expected to have an instant fix for all things electronic, sight unseen, from a vague description of a perceived problem.

Plus, due to the fact that I've worked in the automotive aftermarket since my teenage years, folks believe I have encyclopedic knowledge. Sorry, I can't fix your car over the phone, I don't know every price and part number off the top of my head and I can't see all of the hidden flaws in that used car you're thinking of buying.

My bad. Heck, the last time I tried to walk on water I sank all of the way to my knees!

 

That's basically sums it up.
My story, no not one of those where I knew it all. I had a coworker that had some certificates, training and exams. One day he calls me up and says "I know the procedure but could you refresh my memory over the phone to save some time." That phone call ended taking about 40 minuets since I had to guide him over the phone on every little step of that task. This is something that I would do in about 5 minutes and a friend commented he could guide his wife over the phone to do this in less than 15 minutes.

 

I work in the nuclear construction industry. I work with a lot of people who are confident, and rightfully so. However, they are willing to listen to others opinions, actively debate over Code interpretations, and aren't reluctant to listen to someone just because they're younger. There are, however, a few know-it-alls, and it's a shame. Because what I do is such a niche area, their stubbornness ultimately can negatively impact plant performance and longevity of materials (not a safety issue, just not best practice).

I like to think I fall into the confident category. I listen in awe to some of the elders (one of whom is my boss, and the best I've ever had for that matter), but I will stand my ground when and where necessary. I probably tread dangerous grounds politically within the organization at times, but it hasn't really backfired on me yet.

 

I struggle with being a know-it-all. I know a lot of trivial crap. I recognize that I am and make an effort to keep my mouth shut. It doesn't always work.

 

I like to think of myself as a know it all. Unfortunately, every attempt to prove it reveals the fallacy.

I do know things though, honest.

 

Really dude... No one is paying attention. Go ride your scooter or something.

 

Shit. Rub it in why don't ya. My scooter is in storage, thousands of miles away.

 

I'd like to be a know-it-all, but I realized you can't be one if you get most of your information from Google and Wikipedia.

 

Sad. My scooter is too.

 

I've got two that stand out.

The first is from highschool. I was taking Cisco courses offered by the school and taught by someone who at some point may have known what they were doing but had devolved to letting cheating on her recertification exams. At one point I told her the reason my monitor at home, a trinitron, could do 85hz at 1600x1200 and all the monitors at school topped out in the 60-70hz @ 1024x768 range was because my monitor had a special tripolarity-magnetic interoceter which shunted all extra-capacitorial power to a non-hertzian frequency and cut a lot of interference so it could go higher. I also told her that I had both WiFi and IR cables. I figured she didnt respond mainly because she'd heard it all and was just not dignifying that with a response... until I heard that she'd been trying to talk the tech department at school into ordering these parts.

Fast forward a year or two and some friends in a grade below me are telling me she's at it again, this time teaching that the internet is transmitted on Serial Cables. Naturally, it's time to be a dick again. So this time we get together and wind up convincing her that the internet backbone has all its DNS data and whathaveyou stored on special servers in international waters on an artificial island (like an oil rig) called Serial Island which was constructed in co-sponsorship by Microsoft, IBM, and Kelloggs. Again she buys it and the explanation that Kelloggs was in it for the marketing of the name. Later on we up the stakes around the time those Fiber cereals get big and tell her that with everyone upgrading to fiber optics the island's been upgraded to Fiber Island, which has been "very helpful for smoothness and regularity of transmission".

The second Know-It-All is unfortunately someone I work with. This person hasn't been at our location very long, not as long as the rest of us in the back room by a long shot, but is a lot older than most of us since we're all college students and he's a career member transferred in by corporate. His favorite thing to do is remind us that he's worked in kitchens for X double digit years and "knows how to wash dishes"... which is great except for the fact that our backroom machinery has a lot of wierd quirks and oddball behavior since a lot of it is either half-broken or non-standard in some way. Some things really do require first hand experience, working around the quirks of a unique setup is one of them.

The problem is that a lot of people for whatever reason are split between either being irrationally angered or awed by people who just know where to look up information quickly, or have a decent breadth of knowledge to deal with small things from a wide variety of fields. I'm constantly trying to avert Grumpyolddude's problem by telling people I'm not a genius, just really good with google.

 

Whatever he said......