Okay! Guess it is time for yet another "throat
ripping" rant about the arrogance of some people. Besides the
"normal" people, ie... politicians, supposed experts, and college
professors, I am talking about those who prove the statement that; "a
little knowledge is a dangerous thing"- Thomas Henry Huxley. Okay we all
expect that those who have spent YEARS in a certain field or a certain location
to have some knowledge and expertise when it comes to their area of knowledge
but when you have someone who has just entered a field or location after work someplace
else and in something else that has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with their new job
but they think because they have a little knowledge in the broad field that
that can be funneled into a “expertise” in the new location or field.
I have dealt with people who spent over a decade in
the military working as a mechanic on military vehicles and then got a job
working as security for a gate community. He thought that “well I was in the
military so I know how security should be done” and the really bad thing was
that the higher ups for the security company said that we should listen to him
because he was ex-military and would know what to do. Now while I have nothing
but the utmost respect for those who serve this country and feel we should do
all we can to help them, there is a point where it is like wait what the hell
is going on here.
The security company I mentioned above always hired
ex-military and ex-law enforcement before anyone else and take a wild guess
what the outcome was? That’s right they were usually the worst guards at any
post they were posted at. They very often thought they were the experts and
would not listen to anyone else when it came to procedure because they thought
they knew best. I had to work with one who thought that since we are doing
security for people who make six to seven figures a year we should do the same
security that one would expect at a nuclear power plant; check ID’s, log VIN#
of vehicles, even if the guest is an immediate family member call the resident
to confirm if we should let them in. We tried to explain to him that this was
not acceptable to the residents but he would not listen. We then had to inform
the office of this and the response we got… “Oh, we’ll look into it”. To say
the least this did not go over well when the residents found out. The office
still took another month to get him off the post and we are pretty sure it is
because the residents threatened to cancel the contract.
Then we got a guard who thought he knew better than
everyone else how the computer should be set-up simply because he used one in
his other job that was set-up the way he thought it should be, he did not take
into account the level of competence others at the post had with Microsoft word,
excel, and the like, he just thought his way was the right way and we were
wrong for doing it any other way and to hell with whether a person knew how to
use it or not. However, this is not the worst offence of arrogance out there
that I have seen, that belongs to the people in the office themselves.
The person that is currently in charge of operations
for the company has many years of security, which in itself is a good thing,
seems to have no clue how to manage the day to day operations of the company. As
one example they hired someone to work a post with a set schedule that includes
weekends but when they hired this person he informed them that he could not
work any Saturday for the first two months work that post because of previous engagement,
which is fine. However, the issue arises when the very first Saturday comes
around and he does not show up at the time because he had gotten hired with the
knowledge that he could not do those days, the problem arises when the office
was called to inform them that no relief had arrived and they asked “Who was
supposed to be there?” All I could think was “Are you fu%$ing joking, you’re
the operations manager and you are asking me who is supposed to be here?” This
went on for eight straight weeks, never knowing if relief would show or not and
when we called getting the same response. However, if you call them on any of
this they assume the attitude of superiority you see in those with a Napoleonic
Complex of they can do no wrong and are always right, even when they aren’t.
This pure arrogance can do more harm to the company
through the low morale of its employees than any other common workplace occurrence.
While I do agree with promoting from within I do have one very big codicil to
this. If a person cannot fulfill the duties correctly or truly does not have
the knowledge base or necessary attitude to learn from mistakes and others they
should not get the job and if they do they should lose the job in favor of
better candidate even if hired from outside the company.
