I was reminded of this ‘incident’ at dinner Saturday night; it actually happened a couple of years ago, but some folks STILL remember it…

Now on with the story-

I was sitting in on a meeting discussing training and procedures and how to fix both for a ‘certain’ location, one of the “junior” folks had been tasked to go back through archival data and documents to see if there was any previous information that might be pertinent to the discussions.  

Now for a point of reference, this guy had a rather over/hyper-inflated sense of self, to put it mildly, he thought his didn’t stink  (think BIG watch, little dick type)…

Anyhoo… At the end of the first day, a document from the mid 90s was brought up, and this little asshat summarily dismissed it with this statement.  “Aw that is useless, it was written by some civilian dude named (ME), since he was a civilian, I’m POSITIVE he didn’t have any experience and it cannot be useful.” 

Now at this point, some of the heavies in the room are all looking around at me to see my response; I just nodded to a couple of the heavies, and smiled…

After the first day closed, a few of us including this guy’s boss were talking, most of them wanted to know why I hadn’t said anything… I responded I didn’t know how important this guy was in the food chain.  One of the heavies basically said, less and less important due to his attitude, so if you want to take him down a peg or two, that’s fine!

Soooo, next morning we reconvene, and the document gets brought up again…  Now the poking starts from others, well WHY isn’t the document useful?  Did you actually read it?  

So asshat goes into this long diatribe about how it didn’t make any sense, nobody would do it that way, etc…

I interrupted and asked how he “knew” this, had he actually tried it, or had any real experience.

His answer was he had ALL this experience and he KNEW stuff like this wouldn’t work.

So I interrupted again and asked him about his SPECIFIC experience relating to the subject (e.g. had he ever actually flown in that area)…

Turns out it is really zero!

Now at this point, he’s getting a little pissed, so he finally asks me what my name is and why am I “confusing” the issue…

So I tell him, and tell him I am the author of that particular document, at which point most of the meeting erupts in laughter…  

 So now asshat decides to question my credibility, after I lay out my background (including the fact that I had quite a few hours IN that area doing the actual mission), asshat decides, “Well, you are out of date and out of touch with the current procedures.”

My comeback was, “Oh really?”

At that point, his boss called a break, and left the room with asshat…

After the break, no asshat!  He’d been sent back to the office and basically told he was relieved of his job!

Moral of the story- Before you open your mouth in an open meeting, know who is at the table, and what their backgrounds are…  OR keep your ego in check…

Old age and treachery will over come youth and ego ANY day of the week!