Paying to obey

Post Reply New Topic

I have a question that I haven't been able to decipher by myself through observation and thinking. Like with all attitudes of NTs, it takes me years of work to understand what others are born instinctively knowing why.

My question is: why do so many NTs (at least in my experience) pay big amounts of money to a professional and then don't dare question anything because the professional is the authority? In my (twisted??) mind, if there has to be an authority (though I much prefer equality) it should be the customer, not the person providing the service.

I've been severely criticized by peers for daring raise a (polite) question to a teacher (I mean when all students are adults and paying a lot of money for the classes), not to mention a physician or a psychotherapist. Why is the doctor/psychotherapist/teacher supposed to be higher in the pecking order than the client? Obviously, the professional knows better in regard to the profession, but why does the professional have authority in issues that are not connected to their expertise? If you arrive late to the therapist's appt., you pay for the time you weren't there and it's not given back to you. But if the therapist is late, they extend the session and don't give you the money for the time you lost. If you can't stay over, then you lose it. Why this double standard in relating that is not connected to the expertise???

This has made me wary of hiring professional services, because I know I'm expected to treat them as if they're more important than me or else I'll be kicked out or told off.

This is a really god question Greentea.

It's something that I also question and have done ever since I was consciously an adult.

People - the sheeple- just accept blindly it seems that 'an expert' is the mighty authority. These 'experts' are never questioned. I proved it by becoming an 'expert' - only because I decided it would be cool to be an 'expert', it would be fun. Ok, so people were willing to pay me $$mountains and my decisions and recommendations were never countered.

To be perfectly frank it felt rather like taking candy from a baby, easy work and easy money. But I never lost my respect for service commissioners nonetheless.

You know what I think? I reckon that most people do not want to take responsibility, They are only too pleased to call in someone 'who knows better'. Given that most people are NTs, most NTs seem to demonstrate the immaturity that they project onto aspies.

lupin, You remind me that when I was a teacher, (female) students would open doors for me and offer me rides after class, but I wasn't expected to have such gestures with them in return.

In the same way, people have told me that they lie to their psychotherapists what their therapists want to hear sometimes, so the therapist won't get annoyed or offended or shocked, and that they write for creative writing class what they know won't upset or rub the teacher the wrong way. Eg if the teacher keeps kosher, they don't write a story about pork. How ridiculous is this? They pay top $$$ to mislead their therapist about their issues, and pay top $$$ to censor their creative writing???

Therapy is getting people to talk to themselves,

Creative writing is getting them to put it in writing.

Both these people should feel guilty for taking money.

I am an expert in such things, I will be rude for money.

In business consulting the first rule is treating the owner, CEO, like a dumb child.

They are paying someone to disagree with them.

Humans are weird, but I like money.

People are dumb sheep. I don't care about somebody's rank or title, I care about the person's actual merit

I have never had a problem with asking my Doc about a course of action or asking a professor a question that is related to a class. I also don't understand the reasoning that a lot of people have with not asking questions and just taking it at face value.

Heck, if I did not question my doctor, I would have stayed on wellbutrin becoming more and more paranoid and freaky as the endless days of no sleep mounted.


As for teachers/professors, heck yeah I questioned them in college. I was paying good money for an education and if I cared enough about the subject and I had a problem with something that they said, I would question them. I would not always get a satisfactory answer, especially from English professors on the correct interpretation of the message one should get from a poem or story, but I kept asking. English courses seemed to be the worst, because most of them did not welcome questions that went against the grain of established interpretation. The only time I really could accept some of their interpretations, was when we had evidence in that this was how the author meant for it to be interpreted and not that some gaggle of Lit professors sat down one day and decided this is how they see it, so everyone should see it that way. In science and math type classes, usually the teacher could explain why a theory or rule really worked and I can logically understand that.

In one class that I had, the dean actually reviewed my work over the term and raised my grade. It seems word of my questioning of my instructor and her increasingly chilly responses to me got back to her and she suspected bias against me. Apparently she was right, because I went from a C in that class to a B after she reviewed all of my work.

I have little to add except that I experience this a lot.

I understand that patients should have to pay for time scheduled but not utilized because it prevents another patient from receiving that timeslot.

But I think a doctor should refund time not utilized.

I've always been frustrated with jobs because bosses always ask employees to arrive five or ten minutes early but don't pay for those five or ten minutes, much less the trip to work. A boss is a combination of a trainer and a representative of a company (even if the company is their own) who, ideally, facilitates relations between the two parties while overseeing day-to-day operations.

A bad boss works for the company. A good boss works for the employees so that the employees work for the company. (If the employees are bad bosses to a boss then the boss can quit. By which I mean, he can fire them.

I have a lot of issues dealing with people in the arts and humanities. Usually, everyone has a theory of how things work. And, in particular, everyone develops terminology and rules for art. A play is supposed to challenge societal conventions, they say, or a play is supposed to make a moral statement. Perhaps a play is supposed to be a means of connecting with myth, a representation of causality in dramatic form, etc. Everyone in theatre, for example, has some immutable laws about what plays are, what makes a good play (big musical numbers, quiet human drama, swordplay) and everyone goes around spouting their version as absolute truth.

I love theatre, writing, poetry, painting, etc. I think my best shot at REAL employability is through some form of artistic expression.

But everywhere I go, designers, professors, editors, publishers -- they've tried to nail everything down into formulas. And it just doesn't work for me because I start getting into semantic debates with the people "in authority" and they think they should take offense if I contradict them, even if, for instance, I contradict them but indicate I am willing to do things their way even if it isn't my opinion.

I'm corrected. I'm told that what they say isn't "opinion" but "fact".

My experiences with NTs have caused me to question whether there are truly facts. IMO, there is simply observation and observation is NEVER objective so we have no basis for determining facts. There are simply very solid opinions (that we have a sun which the earth orbits) and less reliable opinions.

My agreement should never be a requisite for working with anyone and no one should be pleased or displeased with me based upon my opinions.

If a boss fires a person, they should not be angry if I say, for instance, "I don't think you should have fired that person. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm not calling you names. It's done. But I disagree with your choice. If I were the boss, I would not have done that. I'm not the boss. So, tell me what you need from me now."

Perfectly appropriate IMO. But for all my life, I get people who actually get angry when I say things like that or accuse me of challenging their authority even if I say it quietly to a boss in private. If that's challenging authority then I suppose I think all authority ought to be challenged.

If the idea of authority is that it's not simply something to treat with dignity but something that I should expect to be offended by an opposing viewpoint then I think it would be better to have no authority anywhere in the world.