As most people over 40, I have had my experiences with arrogant people who achieved success too early.
1) There was the time the Supt. asked if I would mind covering the office so he could take his secretaries to lunch for Secretaries Day. It was my pleasure. A young guy who was an Ass’t to the Super came to me with a letter and an envelope. He said, “Here, fold this and put it in the envelop.” I, mind you, was also an administrator assigned to the Superintendent. I said, as succinctly and as sweetly as I could muster, “Do it yourself.”
2) There was the guy who asked me to take his photo off a photo wall of colleagues in my office because “it embarrassed him.” I removed it. There have been numerous guffaws since.
3) The guy who removed my name from the front of a document and put his on it. When the boss told me to memorize it, I said it shouldn’t be too hard since I wrote it.
4) The fellow whose wife was doing all his work at home so he could prance about giving orders … He and I were standing in the hall chatting one day when he caught the Principal approaching. He pretended not to see him and began giving me directives. We were both VPs. There was the morning when he thought he had really nailed me. His wife entered his grades on the computer for him. I did my own. He ran to the Principal on the morning they were due to tattle and tell him that mine were not online. Of course they were. His wife just looked a few minutes too early.
My list goes on and on. Far too often we are so quick to think this one or that one is a rising star. Far too often we are so wrong. I never knew any rising stars among the women with whom I worked … they didn’t get promoted too soon nor did they seem to have the attitude that they were superior in some way to all around them. Sadly, I see it in men over and over and over.