[Suits]

I just came home from work and I'm pissed. It should be below me to feel this way, but I can't help it, so here I am to rant.

I do a lot of reading. I don't remember everything, but when something peaks my interest, it gets locked in my brain forever.

I don't carry a smartphone, so its pretty easy for people to challenge my memory, because I'm not usually in a position to provide citations upon request.

Today, however, I was.

I do a little part-time contract work for a non-profit organization and I was just finishing up a shift a short while ago when my coworkers I were discussing the organization's multimillion dollar funding deficit, due to some investments that went belly up in the last couple years.

There have been a lot of cutbacks as a result and as it came up in our conversation, I commented that the organization's cafeteria and internal catering service (which is technically a private company, but is owned by the organization itself) had 3% of its funding cut.

Two of the three guys I was talking to immediately and aggressively started calling me a liar.

"No, that's impossible. You're wrong."

I assured them that I was correct, I'd read it in the official company newsletter, just one day prior.

The third member of the conversation happened to have a copy of the newsletter on his desk and passed it to me.

I found the relevant quotation and read it to me.

Silence. Shoulders shrugging. No response.

This really pisses me off, because I pride myself in what I do know, which on most issues is nothing, but on some issues is quite a lot. Yet people challenge me and get in my face because they don't like the facts that I am sharing.

The deny them just because they can.

I know I'm right, but I can't prove it to them. And even when I can, they'll just be pissed at me for being right.

These guys got very aggressive with me before I shut them down by reading the newsletter. If the newsletter copy hadn't been on hand, they would have smugly continued to live ignorantly.

They'll pull this stupidity again and again for the rest of their lives.

I have a personality that helps me weed out the people that I don't believe are worth even acknowledging the existence of. A friend warned me the other day that I might miss out on knowing some good people if I keep doing what I do, but I disagree.

Most people are narcissistic assholes and I quickly figure out who is full of **** and who is actually a nice, genuine person.

In my experience, there are an exceptional few who aren't assholes when they can get away with it. I'm happy with the few people that I consider worth my time. The rest are dead to me and I'd consider it just if they met a traumatizing death.

Can anyone here relate with these feelings?

[Pyre]

Did you ever read "How to Win Friends" by Dale Carnegie?

No one gives a fuck that you're right. They're upset that they lost face cause they were wrong.

Men are just as emotional as women.

There's a time and place for standing up for what's right and what you believe in - but casual small talk isn't one of them.

I used to have an employee who did this sort of thing. Regardless of if he was right or if he wasn't, soon enough whenever he opened his mouth everyone rolled their eyes, and everyone soon did they're best to avoid engaging him in any conversation. And when he tried to join a small group who were chatting everyone quickly dispersed.

[_DC_]

Who cares? Its "piques" interest not "peaks".

[Sombro]

A lot of persuasion is convincing people that It's in *their* best interest rather than yours.
In this case, having solid facts .
But yeah, you gotta pick your battles.

[mental]

If you were a kid then you know how it feels like when you're corrected by a fat annoying kid or an adult. You shouldn't care if you're right or not, you should only care if it will help you or your ego.

[MHaes]

(10-19-2013 04:07 PM)_DC_ Wrote:  

Who cares? Its "piques" interest not "peaks".

[Hades]

Well, yeah, they were in the wrong for always wanting to win gay ass ego battles (so many of my coworkers are like that), but you did directly contradict them (correctly) and made them look like fools. They'll not soon forget that and will associate you with wounded egos - not necessarily a bad thing unless they're going to hit you with a bunch of passive aggressive shit to fuck with your head.

In their minds, you entrapped them into asserting something wrong (even though they might just be contrarian assholes) and then made them look like jackasses in public (that kind of public humiliation can be 'unforgivable' depending on who you're dealing with). Those ego wounds are very real injuries.

They have a reason for believing this - if you actually just cared about the fact at hand (and had no emnity towards them whatsoever), you wouldn't have taken their 'insults' personally.

A constructive alternative: you can "befriend" people with an attitude adjustment (disarm is a better word), I'm not talking about going belly-up every time they assert something completely in the wrong, just ask tactful questions that allows them to save face or even sidestep their pretensions - like

Quote:

"Hey man, did you check out the company newsletter? I'm pretty sure I read something about funding cuts" - then if they're wrong they can concede "Hm, must have missed the memo", "Been too busy with TCP reports to bother reading it", or "That's interesting".

Or

Quote:

"You guys up to speed on all those cutbacks going on? Check this shit out - right here in the newsletter." - then you've disarmed them and hopefully gotten their attention. They can't assert that cutbacks aren't going on, that would be retarded - you have the newsletter right in your hands and are reading off it.

Or even something direct like -

Quote:

"Anybody have a newsletter handy?" - then read the relevant info.

Give people room to make excuses for themselves. I guess that's the only rule you really need. If you want an "edge", it's right there, you'll always hold people who make excuses like this with some unavoidable degree of contempt. Making an excuse in particular is a submissive gesture and expresses some deference to the speaker.

People are stupid and will frequently dig their own graves on the high risk/high reward conversational rollercoaster, asserting things that might be complete bullshit, lying to those who might know something they don't, saying stupid things without thinking about them just to dominate a conversation or possibly look correct, and just in general being intellectually lazy pieces of shit. I don't even see anything wrong with this.

Tact is oftentimes the ability to communicate directly to people's interests (or values) diplomatically while directing the conversation towards your interests; if you can subcommunicate that what's good for your interests is good for theirs - preferably through positive suggestion rather than subtle threats - , you will never be short on allies - tact has absolutely nothing to do with causing or not causing offense IMO - in fact causing offense can be a motivational tool if you can echo exactly what somebody secretly thinks about himself. You just must have prepared yourself long beforehand and have the exact solution they can follow, that is if you're interested in motivating somebody else to work towards your goals (or a mutual goal).

Work on tact - it would be better to be everyone's disarming confidante than the guy who always butts heads with the egotistical shitheels stumbling ass-backwards through the office. You know something about everybody, fit into every situation, and are the first name on everybody's minds when considering who they can trust. You're free to burn bridges and have it actually mean something to the person you just got done screwing. That's actual power.

One thing to keep in mind particularly is that you took their comments personally - this is a serious problem - they were much more concerned with the minor ego victory of being right than they were trying to undermine your self-belief that you have serious information about select topics and (in their minds) you were more concerned in trading pain for pain rather than at the fact at hand. See, that's your ego reaction to this particular conflict and it's already fucked with your head a bit. Put that aside, they're so wrapped up in their own heads they don't know shit about you or how you operate. All they understand is that they struck a nerve somehow and they will continue to feed on that. They have more incentive now.

Work instead on taking calculated risks and achieving real victories so you'll always have a self-worth/esteem advantage over any and all of your competition - you'll be literally untouchable in terms of having an "eternally optimistic confidence frame" of steel. Keep your endgame in mind every day and people will start considering you a "visionary" or some such shit.

[Hades]

-delete-

[scorpion]

You come across as some kind of Asperger's guy, who is obsessed with the facts and "being right", even going so far as to provide citations.

Newsflash: this is not how the vast majority of human beings prefer to interact with one another. You need to lighten up. There is a time and place for "being right". Bullshitting around with your co-workers about the company cafeteria? Do you really think that was one of them? What exactly was at stake that demanded you PROVE to them that you were correct, and make them look foolish in the process? And if you really did want to prove that you were right, you could have challenged them in a joking manner. Instead you turned it into some kind of ridiculous confrontation. Over what? Over a fucking newsletter article? Come on.

It sounds like you need to practice your social skills. If you don't, not only will you be setting yourself up for lots more of this type of needless frustration in the future, but you will be significantly handicapping your personal and professional relationships.

Learn to pick your battles. People don't like a guy who is always right about everything, they like a guy who they can get along with. And guess what? If they get along with you well, they will start to believe things when you tell them, and you won't have to carry around citations for everything. Funny how that works.

[The Beast1]

When I was younger, I had a similar situation where I was right and proceeded to get all of my 5th grade classmates ganging up on me. I got my recees docked and made a HUGE stink out of it.

I had a note sent home and of course mom had to sign it for me. I told her the story and she retorted me this lesson:

You can be right and be alone or you can bite your tongue and have friends.

This fucked with me hardcore for a very long time. It wasn't until recently that I decided I would rather be alone and be right.

While I happily conceed being incorrect almost all of the time, i throw out the shit tests just because i can. Don't let it get to you.

[Duke Castile]

(10-19-2013 06:32 PM)scorpion Wrote:  

Instead you turned it into some kind of ridiculous confrontation. Over what? Over a fucking newsletter article? Come on.

NO!!!!

The cafeteria had 3% of it's funding cut!!! Jesus fucking Christ!!!

I'm I the only one besides Suits who cares about the FACTS!!!????


Definitely Aspergers.

[worldwidetraveler]

Suits, you are going to be a very unhappy person if you don't change the way you think.

[Emancipator]

Suits, I dont think the cafeteria had 3% of it's funding count. I don't buy it, impossible.

[Dusty]

(10-19-2013 08:40 PM)Emancipator Wrote:  

Suits, I dont think the cafeteria had 3% of it's funding count. I don't buy it, impossible.

[Suits]

I took this way too serious. I was coming off of 16 hrs straight at work with only three hours of sleep somewhere in the middle of it.

I called up one of the girls in my rotation, went and watch the new Matt Damon film and now I don't care any more.

I think what pissed me off was the shockingly aggressive response I got from these guys, from seemingly out of left field. While I'm sure we've all met people that aren't particularly well informed, I don't know if I've encountered a situation like this where two people seemed to get mad at me regarding a relatively minor statistic.

No one who knows me has ever suggested that I have Aspergers. I had one dude recently who said that it initially occurred to him when he met me, but he quickly changed his mind once he got to know me a bit better.

I have struggled socially my whole life, but that's seen like a thing of the past ever since I started to explore game. Depending on what type of people I am dealing with, my mileage varies, however.

For example, in university, I had very little luck with the rich kids that attended my somewhat elitist school. But my friends from outside the school network quickly accepted me when I ventured outside the "bubble."

I think I'd be safe to say that I'm very quick to discriminate against people that express an entitled attitude towards life, whereas, I'm very fond of those who are more down to earth.

Thanks for the honest opinions guys. They were hard to hear, but I appreciate your collective willingness to speak your minds.

[Jackreacher]

There's so many uninformed people you're going to get pissed off often with that outlook. Personally I've found it more valuable to step off the desire to convince or "inform" the uninformed just for the sake of it. If something is on the line then yea maybe it's worth a shot but otherwise, I wouldn't put myself out there.

It's like red pill stuff. They're programmed to believe in society's values, getting through that takes a jackhammer. If you've managed to get through them they still may not even appreciate it and you get very little reward for it.

[Duke Castile]

I think what you're really saying is that you have an issue with overly aggressive attacks/responses and you thought that just clearing things up with proof would settle the matter.

Which makes more sense than getting hung up on some low caliber event like the 3% funding cut.

[iknowexactly]

(10-19-2013 08:23 PM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  

Suits, you are going to be a very unhappy person if you don't change the way you think.

OP is being overly perfectionistic to the detriment of his social relationships. You can be aware they're wrong on a minor point like this without getting yourself mad or making them lose face.

And you should be clear, it's YOU making yourself mad, unless you're letting others control your emotions, which is not a good idea.

"Against stupidity the Gods themselves struggle in vain."
-Goethe

This sentence has three important pieces of wisdom in it.

One, stupidity is unlimited and forever, and will long, long, outlast you.

The second is that, even though they must know #1, even the GODS struggle against it--foolishly.

And third, even the Gods lack the power to change it.

And I'll add a fourth: We're all wrong and stupid sometimes, so give people a break unless it's something important and you really have no choice.

[iknowexactly]

(10-19-2013 09:54 PM)Suits Wrote:  

I took this way too serious. I was coming off of 16 hrs straight at work with only three hours of sleep somewhere in the middle of it.

I called up one of the girls in my rotation, went and watch the new Matt Damon film and now I don't care any more.

I think what pissed me off was the shockingly aggressive response I got from these guys, from seemingly out of left field.

Good catch noticing that they overreacted.

My guess is there's some OTHER issue they're pissed off at you about, but which they can't mention directly for some reason, and this was a chance for them to unleash their anger at you about it indirectly. Displacement.

Now you can start to figure out what they're really mad about.