I am surprised by the lack of support for ageless, as well as the knee-jerk assumption that the poster is in the wrong. It screams of respondents projecting their own flaws onto our ageless unknown.
Taking the post at face value, I would tell someone like ageless that he or she is not alone, that it is a problem and that it is not always his or her fault. Furthermore, even people with a history of poor people-skills deserve to be treated with respect in the workplace, and they ought not to be assumed automatically guilty in each and every situation.
True story: When I was 17 years old, I was a full-time reporter for a small newspaper in West Virginia. I had a college degree from a good university, intern experience at a big-city daily and responsibility for all of the comings and goings in Morgan County, population 13,000.
I covered cops, courts, schools and crime. It was the bloodiest of all the jobs I've had since, including graduate work on emergency medical services. Everyone knew me, most took me seriously and I had a good relationship with my sources.
I also was barred from the main restaurant in our small town after 6 p.m. until I turned 18. Never mind that I had gone there for a month before anyone found out how old I was, or that I had never tried to order a drink or caused trouble. Never mind that the owner knew me, purported to be nice to me and knew no regulator would care if I was there unescorted, especially given my role in the community. What's more, she dropped this bombshell on me in the middle of an interview in front of my source.
It was gratuitous, mean-spirited and entirely based on irrational age discrimination. It had nothing to do with my own people skills or lack thereof. (At this point in my career, I have enough counter-examples to be able to separate those out into their own category.)
Sometimes, people are threatened, or judgmental, or just plain cruel, like middle schoolers who won't let the geeky kids play kickball. And most of the time, the rest of us sit back and watch it happen, and we rationalize 'well, there must be some basis to it.' Sometimes there isn't, and we limit ourselves and our society by accepting actions like these at face value.
There ought not to be an automatic penalty for being precocious. Other smart people, in particular, ought to recognize the restrictions society throws at its gifted and do what they can to prevent lasting damage, so that abrasive smart kids can grow into well-adjusted members of society.
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Taking the post at face value, I would tell someone like ageless that he or she is not alone, that it is a problem and that it is not always his or her fault. Furthermore, even people with a history of poor people-skills deserve to be treated with respect in the workplace, and they ought not to be assumed automatically guilty in each and every situation.
True story: When I was 17 years old, I was a full-time reporter for a small newspaper in West Virginia. I had a college degree from a good university, intern experience at a big-city daily and responsibility for all of the comings and goings in Morgan County, population 13,000.
I covered cops, courts, schools and crime. It was the bloodiest of all the jobs I've had since, including graduate work on emergency medical services. Everyone knew me, most took me seriously and I had a good relationship with my sources.
I also was barred from the main restaurant in our small town after 6 p.m. until I turned 18. Never mind that I had gone there for a month before anyone found out how old I was, or that I had never tried to order a drink or caused trouble. Never mind that the owner knew me, purported to be nice to me and knew no regulator would care if I was there unescorted, especially given my role in the community. What's more, she dropped this bombshell on me in the middle of an interview in front of my source.
It was gratuitous, mean-spirited and entirely based on irrational age discrimination. It had nothing to do with my own people skills or lack thereof. (At this point in my career, I have enough counter-examples to be able to separate those out into their own category.)
Sometimes, people are threatened, or judgmental, or just plain cruel, like middle schoolers who won't let the geeky kids play kickball. And most of the time, the rest of us sit back and watch it happen, and we rationalize 'well, there must be some basis to it.' Sometimes there isn't, and we limit ourselves and our society by accepting actions like these at face value.
There ought not to be an automatic penalty for being precocious. Other smart people, in particular, ought to recognize the restrictions society throws at its gifted and do what they can to prevent lasting damage, so that abrasive smart kids can grow into well-adjusted members of society.
Rebecca Christie rebecca.christie@dowjones.com