It’s been a long time since I felt this anger in me, and I’ve been trying to shake it off for sometime but it’s just not going. It took me a long time to realize something that has been going on, but I'm glad I just unveiled this issue.
In Africa, and I think other places, someone people admire most of the time is an intelligent person. When you are intelligent, it’s very common for people to want to be friends with you, be around you to learn or not even to learn. It’s just always “cool” to be around an intelligent person.
But for some time now, it’s been the opposite for me. There’s this person I work with who I believe is knowledgeable. I know, I know. I didn’t use Intelligent because sometimes, he’s wrong when he speaks but he just does it with confidence. And we all know what speaking with confidence does.
So as I was saying earlier, he’s just knowledgeable. For some time now, I've realized that he actually employs condescension a lot in the way he relates with people at work. He speaks in a way that makes him look superior to everyone.
Another thing I’ve realized is that he’s so quick to point out the wrongs of people. He’s so quick to circle where people couldn’t meet the target. He’s always in a rush to just open people’s eyes to the things they didn’t do right. And he always does that in comparison to himself. He compares how he would never make such a mistake.
And as someone whose toxic trait used to be provocative criticism, I feel like shutting him up when he starts doing that. With my experience, I know how terrible one can actually feel after criticizing them provocatively. Aside from the person feeling bad, they can also just give up on whatever they’re doing with the feeling that they are not enough or will never be good enough.
Back to this person yeah? One thing I’ve realized is that he uses complex language. And he doesn’t do it because it’s necessary; he just does it to make people feel ignorant. I’ve taken my time to observe the kind of facial expression he has each time he uses a complex word for someone to look lost, and you know what’s interesting? He always has that smile of “yes, I feel fulfilled.”
Putting this together, I realized he is an intellectual bully. Today, he made a mistake and someone tried correcting him and this guy actually tried bringing up the person's academic flaw instead of taking the correction. I mean, bullies hate to be bullied, right? So it makes sense.
I don’t know how to deal with such bullies but I’ll take my time and find solutions to the problem. For the sake of the people who have been bullied so much to the point that they already feel inferior in his presence. And that's where my anger stems from. Because as a human being, why should you bully your colleagues so much that they begin to feel inferior in your presence?
Images are mine