Have you ever met a know-it-all? I’m sure you have. They are all over the place, and they force themselves on others. But how can we recognize a know-it-all when we see one? Easy. They are always confident, authoritative and striving to impress. They talk about everything in the world as if they invented it from scratch, from nuclear physics and zoology to fashion.
They are always in the know. They are also born to be managers. Someone said that the problem with many Saudi men who apply for jobs is that they think they know everything already and should be employed as managers right away, or they’ll decline the job offered as not up to their standard.
This is certainly a problem, and somehow society encourages it. Whenever a person says he knows how to do something, we take him at his word and treat him accordingly, even if it is proven by experience that he is not what he claims.
Thus, government offices, hospitals, banks, every workplace in this country must have more than one person as self-appointed manager and director. Someone mentioned to me that in a psychiatric hospital in Jeddah, the supervisor of clinics is a gynecologist. Now one wonders what sort of qualification a gynecologist has that enables him to supervise and evaluate the work of psychiatrists.
That doesn’t matter; he believes he is the right man for the job and has persuaded those in administration that he is the best and so it goes.
Whether logical or not, the self-appointed know-it-all does his job with confidence and lack of knowledge, and even though people around him know the truth, they nonetheless accept the status quo.
It is not in the workplace alone that we encounter this kind of person. In our daily lives, they are always there, beaming false but confident knowledge and demanding to be treated as experts. In women’s sections of mosques, there are always those who take it upon themselves to correct other women.
So you find someone pulling you into what she sees as the line; another tells you that your position for praying is wrong and a third advises you on the proper way to sit.
If there is one who genuinely knows what she is talking about, there are ten others who do not; their ignorance, however, does not stop them from offering advice.
Their advice naturally results in confusion, because after listening to so much unwanted and unnecessary advice, you lose sight of what should be done and find it easier to do what they say and perform your prayers as they direct.
If there were a way of knowing which person was a fake, things would be much easier for us. We would certainly be saved from following bad advice.
The problem is that those people know how to present themselves and eventually get recognition that otherwise should have gone to the silent few who really know what they are doing but lack the ability of self-promotion.
— Arab News Opinion 7 October 2003
