A Billion Expert Opinions
Seems like everyone is an expert these days, that I alone carry the mantle of mediocrity. It’s a little intimidating to be around so many authorities on everything. Their brilliance is breathtaking.
From the mind-reading fruit vendor who can hold forth on the merits of pineapple for however long it takes to perfect a transaction, to the gang of uniformed parking attendants who understand the physics of parking (if not the administration of a clutch), there is no shortage of professionals ready to straighten a guy out, correct him, and show him how it’s done here.
In a few short years the people I’ve come into contact with here have achieved a level of expertise that is unbelievable, so much so that I, for one, can hardly believe it. If I were a kinder, gentler soul I might say it is simply a matter of human nature, that we all have a tendency to lend too much credence to our own myths and invest ourselves with more accomplishment than perhaps we deserve.
But there are individuals whose cockiness is but a thin cover for everyday insecurity, who, by hook or crook, burnish their credentials and flaunt their expertise to cloak a whopping inferiority complex. And then there are those who display a monumental hubris, whose inflated sense of self-importance stems from never having been properly smacked down by a sibling.
If, from a very early age, you are fed a line about superiority, you can, upon growing up, choose to spit it out or dine on it for the rest of your life.
And with that in mind, the feasting continues…
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I am a mediocre man but there is one particular thing I am fairly good at. I have studied and practiced this one particular thing for years and years and years, and my opinions on this one particular thing are sometimes even sought out.
There are many things I know absolutely nothing about, but about this one thing I am confident I am an authority.
A young woman recently rang me with a question about this one thing. She was “looking into it.” She, too, wanted to become good at it. I patiently explained some of the fundamental principles to her.
A week later I had occasion to chat with the same young woman about the one thing. She was by now an authority on the one thing, having "done some online research", and implied that I had the thing all wrong.
***
The waiter at the restaurant is world-weary. He has waited on many foreigners, serving them their strange meat patties and malt beverages; he is therefore well schooled in international culinary habits - an expert. He knows what I am going to order before I tell him, and so I am surprised that he doesn’t just bring the food and drink to me without even taking my order. He is prescient, visionary, skilful – a kung fu waiter.
This young expert server, with his thinly veiled look of contempt, thick lacquered hair and narrow shoulders, yanks out the silverware drawer at the busboy station and proceeds to entertain the dining room with the tinny crashing symphony of plates and spoons. After fifteen minutes or so, he delivers my drink – the wrong drink, of course, because he decided in his own mind what it was that the foreigner wanted to drink, and was so certain of his intelligence that he got it completely wrong. The food order is likewise screwed up. He is hardly able to hide his indignation. He is sure it is I who is mistaken.
***
Managing a staff of experts can be a rare joy and a pleasure. When everyone in the office - from fresh-faced interns to the most senior employee – believes they know more than senior management, the workplace action descends into sheer farce, as all pretend to be earnest and diligent but are, in fact, committed to the belief that they are far more qualified to rule.
Staff members take obsequiousness to an absurd degree, and some managers, usually those with limited exposure to the modern Confucian ethos, will take such flattery as genuine and, to their extreme disadvantage, come to mistake it for respect, when it is in reality its antithesis.
An enlightened manager, one who works alongside his employees and shows compassion and humility, will be viewed as weak, and will eventually be out-manoeuvred, overwhelmed and devoured by the gargantuan Eastern ego that has been forming for millennia.
