Member-only story
Your experience doesn’t matter.
How many times have you heard someone interrupting a conversation saying:“Well, based on my experience I can tell you that…”?
I don’t know about you, but this usually sends shivers down my spine, I start twitching, brace for impact and take a deep breath.
Over centuries, we got accustomed to assuming that individuals who went through certain experiences, certain acts, that have been around for a long time, MUST somehow KNOW. We think that because an individual is older than us he or she might have more experience than us, might understand better, might teach us something. I have to say that closely observing human beings since 1997 taught me that this is wrong, for a lack of swearwords.
To illustrate this paradox I will give you a simple but common example:
You apply for a job at GIO Ltd, a company that specialises in advertising. You get called up and go for an interview. It goes really well and you leave the company building happy and satisfied, but on the way out you see two employees talking in the staff room. They see you and understand you are an applicant since you have a “visitor card”.
Employee A says to you:
