What irritates me the most on this forum

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I realize it's not always apparent on a forum what kind of person you are, and there are people here of all ages and all kinds of life experience. And some are impaired in ways that I'm not and would probably find some kinds of advice helpful that I don't need.

But it just irks me when someone responds to me here, as if they think I'm really young or clueless. I feel if they could see me in person they would think twice about the way they are talking to me. But then again, maybe not. Because it also happens in offline when people assume that I'm younger than I am.

I think I am also getting more sensitive to it, in the last few years, since my supervisors at work keep getting younger and younger, and they don't seem to recognize my level of job experience. It happens to my coworkers too, so at least I know I'm not being singled out for it. And I know it happens at a lot of companies these days.

My supervisor talks to me as if there's no difference between me and a brand new employee. Sometimes I feel like people talk to me kind of the same way here on the forum. Like it's assumed that I must need to be lectured or instructed or disputed on the most basic things. I feel like I've lost all patience with this sort of thing.

I'm 51 and notice that I see everybody about 30 and under as basically a kid. Even though I know and realize they are grown ass adults, men and women, and they aren't clueless or children or anything like that, but my oldest is 26 and so everybody in that age group is to me the "age of my kids". I tend to "Mom them" without meaning to. I get motherly and give advice or something like that, and it's not meant in a mean way at all, it's just meant the way I talk to my own kids and their friends who I still consider to be the "kids from the house" and all and they still relate to me and my husband like that. I guess it's just me.

It's weird because my best friend is a cougar and she dates guys that age. Weird.

I do not think it is about age as much as we can not assume the level of knowledge of the people we are responding to.

Real life has that too, the 30-ish, assuming they know much better and 'll do much better, it would be funny
but I'm too tired for that now. Maybe it was always like that !
The older holding on their territory, succesfull fullfilled live, great friends and opportunities because they were so fantastic, etcetc.

Why don't you start THIS(workworkwork)? No of course, I've never had any idea, you're so clever!
Coming from nothing and going to nothing was a lot of work!!

I actually value the input of younger folks on this forum because, primarily, they're almost ALL younger! Also many of them were diagnosed as younger people and I went through most of my life unaware.

Dianthus, you might want to display your age like OliveOilMom does, so I know what age to address you as.

But I also think it's valuable to figure out what things irritate you and learn to blow that irritation off or develop a cuticle around those issues. For instance, you can just decide not to read certain people's posts? At work, you can decide to network more with mature workers and take a deep breath when your supervisor marginalizes you?

I think it is the most wonderful part of the internet that age, race, or gender, are not necessarily condsidered in the assessment of an individual. I have met older people who act like children and very young people with the wisdom and instincts of old folks.

The safest way to present a new perspective is to start from the ground up. The people that I look up to most in life have the patience to listen to what they already know because they understand the value of getting different views. I try to be like them in this way.

Proving myself at work was the part that I disliked the most. To defend something that I have already established seemed like a waste of time and energy. I too have to fight the urge to get offended when somebody "talks down" to me on a subject that I feel I have a superior grasp on. The ability to bear provocation is an element of maturity.

I'd have to agree that I don't think it should matter how old you are or how long you have worked when it comes to doing a good job. The old timers who were not open to new ideas did not last very long.


-Flexibility is the key to perserverance.

-Taking offense is counter-productive.

What irritates me most about this website are the people who want to argue with you and then put up links to other sites. If they can't express their own opinion, I don't want to be bothered to listen to what they are putting out. And I'm not talking about FYI links, they can be informative. And, I also get irked by these people who write manifestos instead of succinctly expressing their point. This strikes me as a case of 'baffling with bulls@*#t'.

Well we can probably be friends then because I tend to give people my fully uncensored opinion on most matters, whether they asked for it or not. I tend to be so opinionated that I can come off as being an as*hole at times and I'm really working on that.

I'm honestly not a bad guy once you get to know me but sometimes I think I come off as full of myself. It's an honest character flaw of mine and one I'm working hard to repair. I find it takes a great deal of self control for me to fight the urge to not call someone out for asking "silly questions". I put that in quotes because I realize it's an extremely subjective statement.

Redundancy irritates me for some reason and I find I get frustrated with people on here for asking "silly questions" but I have to remind my self of what the OP said about how some are more impaired then others on here and might not have as much experience as others. I have to remind myself that some of the members may have isolated for the a lot of their lives, and just because something seems obvious doesn't mean someone else isn't struggling with it.

I don't know how much of that relates to what the OP mentions, but I don't like being talked to as a child either or as though I'm clueless in "life's lessons". So I know what they are referring to and you can feel free to call me out if I ever come off as talking to you like you're a child. I don't think I do that often, but I could be wrong...

Just for the record, your age has nothing to do with whether or not you're clueless on a given topic. I'm only 27 but I might have more experience than someone else who is 57, in a given subject. I don't get the whole age thing for that reason. The way I talk to you is based off of how you have presented yourself, often I don't even look at peoples ages on here for that reason.

I figure if I did post my age, I'd still have people older than me talking to me like I'm a child.

I hope you don't mean me. I do "Mom" people in their teens and twenties, but it's not condescending. I don't condescend to my own kids so I don't do it to other people's.

I may make a suggestion based on my experience at the person's age or my kids experience if they are the same age as them, or I might suggest they talk to their parent or someone if they are particularly young. But I don't talk down to people usually. I do say hon and sweetie and all that, but I do that to everybody regardless of age. Hon and sweetie don't mean "Hey clueless little kid!", they are just things you call people to let them know you are being nice and friendly.

I have gotten sh***y with people who were in their teens trying to tell me I was wrong about all my life experience and things I know for a fact, when they admitedly haven't had more experience than some high school and living at home with parents and learning to drive. I'm talking about specific things and people trying to sound older and "worldly" and such when it's so obvious by the things they are saying that they aren't and don't have any clue or the experience they claim. Now, most don't do this, but some do. Age doesn't mean they haven't had experience though. I have known some people who had more experience with the world and all kinds of stuff in it when they were 16 than I did when I was 30 and that is a lot. But most people don't live that kind of life like the people who went all over and did all kinds of things and whose parents basically treated them like adults from 12 onward. So, when someone who has even stated before that they haven't done this or that or know this or that starts trying to tell me my experiences are wrong and it's obviously based on books, tv, magazines or the internet, then I tend to talk down to them a bit. Just cause.

It wasn't me you meant who was talking to you like that was it?

True.

Also think sometimes people just have really different ways of looking at things, it's not about one or the other being clueless.

Bottom line, I guess I'm tired of having people talk to me as if they think I'm clueless.

I try not to do that to other people, even if I think they are kind of clueless about something. I realize it's just a matter of them not being able to see things from my own perspective. And I know sometimes I have a really offbeat perspective on things. I think part of it is I feel out of place on this forum, because I'm not finding many like-minded people here.

Oh no, I wasn't thinking of you at all. I'm sorry if you got that impression.

It's not so much when people give "mom" type of advice. I think you give really comprehensive practical advice on things. Like you're just being informative and it's up to the other person what they do with it.

What irritates me is when people are actually somehow trying to tell me what to DO, or trying to change my perspective so that I can see things the way they do (as if their way is so much better than mine).

In my job, it's the way this guy just goes on and on about why we do some really basic job task, telling me the rationale behind it as if I'm a complete moron.

Anyone remember the scenes in Office Space about putting the cover on the TPS reports? It's a lot like that, but worse because he goes on way longer about why we are doing it.

And when I called HR, I told them that my previous supervisor would have just said, this thing needs to be done, and I would do it, simple as that. But the current supervisor is just going on and on telling me WHY we do it and I already know why. I'm even telling him that I already understand and he's not accepting it, and it's distracting me from actually being able to get it done. HR told me he's doing what he was trained to do, and that if my previous supervisor came back he would be doing the same thing now.

I think it has gone WAY past the point that I should just be letting go of my irritation.

So are you saying you're at fault for letting yourself be irritated, or the boss's fault for driving you nuts?

I started putting a little lavender oil on my washcloth when I bathe, and spreading that all over my body. I can't even detect it's still on me, but my hope is that during my day, the soothing effects of lavender will make me less irritable, even if I forget it's there.

I'm saying that the company is at fault for how they are training these supervisors now. And I'm not going to just accept that this is the way things are now, because it's ridiculous and unnecessary. And I'm not going to stop being irritated just because they think we should go along with everything without question. If I have been doing my job well for over 8 years, and then someone comes along and totally disrupts down my routine because they were poorly trained, I have a damn right to be irritated and I have a right to complain about it.

I do love the scent of lavender, I use lavender shampoo and conditioner.

The majority of bosses I have ever had were just plain incompetent at managing people. The most recent one was a young, Black man*, supervising three mature White women. I got into a lot of confrontations with him, but things really improved when another in the group snapped at him in a meeting, "Don't micromanage me!" He backed off a lot after that, and it generalized to all of us.

All the same, he had the authority to make us do some utterly ridiculous, time-wasting things that (he felt) made him look good in the organization. Like keep statistics on our work - only the system was so badly constructed that you would never be able to get any meaningful information from it.

He also got overly intrusive any time I would cc: him on a piece of my work, as though he thought it was addressed to him and not merely cc:'ed to him. Eventually I stopped letting him know what was going on in the department. That was a defensive move on my part (effective, too), but it also made him even less competent as a manager. All because he needed a little R E S P E C T.

* The only reason I mention race is that he was the lowest tier manager you could get, and we as experienced workers in our department already knew how to do our job. I believe he didn't feel he got the "respect" due him as someone senior to us. If you can't boss around old ladies, you're lower than dirt, right? Other bosses have been equally incompetent in other ways, but this is the only time I thought race played any part.