When I was 28 I had to deal with a lot of people who got paid a lot more than me. People who made decisions and controlled money and I had to make nice with the idiots at all times.

My brother was my boss. It was not his company. We were selling and implementing multi-million dollar projects and it was very early on in the development of this division that we were building.

We sold to the army. We dealt with ad agencies. We dealt with vendors.

And I was simply a programmer. Who got tossed into this. I thought I could geek out. Nope.

I had a sign on my door that I expected you to genuflect before asking me any questions. It was stupid and immature. It got a few laughs. But I announced who I thought I was.

My brother drove me to work at all times. That was part of the deal when I took the job. So that meant we had an hour each way.

The day before the big meeting when everyone was supposed to show up and I was supposed to do my dog and pony my brother was called into his boss's office.

The owner and his boss asked: what are we going to do about Crazy?

My brother assured them he would take care of it. He lectured me for an hour on the way home. He lectured me for an hour on the way back the next morning. I said nothing other than mild pleasantries for about 6 hours.

An up and coming ad executive asked a brutally stupid question. While I was typing on the keyboard. My brother was speaking and I glanced up from typing and then glanced back down to the keyboard.

This executive was a young woman. She was stunningly beautiful. This was in the '80s. She must have slept her way into this position. My brother lectured me for 2 hours on her. Do not engage. She was obviously not qualified. But she was in charge.

And she was sensitive to anyone who might challenge her authority.

That glance was enough. That glance was enough to tell her that I thought she was an idiot. I thought I had controlled my expression. I thought I had controlled everything. I was wrong.

She stormed out of the room and my brother followed and it was a big meeting with all the big bosses and there was a lot of ass kissing. They bought the project.

A year later I met her in the hall. Right outside my office. We introduced each other as if we had never met. It was never spoken of again.

I worked with her for years. It took about 5 years before she grew into the position. She was incredible. But it took that time for her to actually learn and apply her intelligence. It took another 5 years and she was in charge of a vast empire.

So anyway, we had a low voiced whisper back and forth in those days whenever we observed anyone doing something stupid at work:

CLM

Which stood for Career Limiting Decision. Until you have f*** you money, every decision you make must be weighed with that in mind.

He made a career limiting decision. But not really. This is politics. And there are right-wingers who will love him for that. So the old rules are off, at least in what you can say on TV. Trump destroyed that.

So his fafo is limited. There's a vast universe of right-wing talking heads that aren't allowed on CNN. He's just another one of them, besides what he does in real life, which I do not know and I am not looking up.

For a while. I just don't want people to think I'm wasting their time. So I have a few more reasons to add to your list.

Keep in mind I learned from a master. Not just Columbo. My elder brother had a dual Masters in counseling and human resource management. Yet he was doing technical project management because that's what was really fun and that's where the money was.

I worked with him side by side, alone and with many people, and had at least an hour of vehicle ride to and from work everyday for around 7 years. He was the ultimate authority in the division but he was only there a day a week. He was whizzing around the country selling projects other than that. So everybody ran to me to deal with anything he would deal with. I had his fake authority (I was never sure what I could get away with) along with my real authority as the technical group leader.

I have spent years watching him and participating when he dealt with the issues that he was in charge of and his dealings of both employees and technical management and dealing with the bosses and dealing with all the very powerful customers and partners. And I had the educated viewpoint the the whole process.

Then I went to the Landmark Education course which allowed me to act out on what I learned. Landmark is a pyramid scheme/cult that actually provides value for a few months. If you can yank yourself out of it. I did.

First of all, when I'm really trying to learn something. I will walk into a room with a dazed look on my face and I will keep my mouth shut for the most part. I'll take notes and I'll answer questions but I will be in absorb mode and occasionally toss out a question. It might be stupid or it might not, that's the point from the other side of the question. Someone simply does not know if their question is stupid. No one would ask a stupid question if they did in that environment.

I will rarely do any of the things you stated because they end up being a challenge to authority. I never want to be the guy in class / meeting who points out a mistake of someone who doesn't know me yet. Unless that is my stated role in the beginning since I am the authority on certain technical areas. That's why I'm in that group at the moment. Since I do not have any educational credentials, it is usually assumed that I know far less than anyone in my peer or above group. I have to prove myself somehow and then I can speak.

The flip side is worse. I've been introduced as someone with godlike powers to groups of people I was supposed to then work with. That is an incredibly high pedestal to fall from.

Next is when I'm in Colombo mode. I can last about 20 minutes that way. I will ask the most innocuous and occasionally silly questions that will mark me as a moron.

There are a few possible reasons for those questions.

One I'm dealing with someone who is actively doing something against me or my department. I have to set up for battle and I have to figure out any weak points. That means I have to get them talking. I have to find the lies but I can't react until I've accumulated a few of them.

The other time is when I'm dealing with a salesperson lying to me or a person during an interview trying to BS their way in. Many other categories of that, but that covers most of them.

The top level is when dealing with an executive who is a technical person who was battling against me from a different department who wants my budget and my job.

That lets the other person go into severe overconfidence mode. They go aggressive and they go into lecture mode.

If this is a short-term issue and I have authority then the reveal will come quickly.

Simply act like a lawyer and ask leading questions but do it kindly. For a bit. Act like you're confused and you need some information from them. But you know most of what happened and you need to figure out this idiot's involvement. Or they're wasting your time for silliness. But you need to respond. Just as long as it takes for you to dispatch the asshole and get out of the conversation.

The other one might take 20 minutes or it might take 3 weeks. Or months. Never more than 6 months. Sometimes I need that much time to accumulate the incompetencies and / or the lies.

But there will be an end.

People who I worked with watched me do this many times. I was the front man for my department and that meant I had to deal with all the other departments. People came and went all the time in those departments. Those were the days of interdepartment warfare so I had to keep this odd detante going.

So for that first 20 minutes when a new person came into this environment who didn't really belong in the environment (fake programmer, bad manager, the usual), all my current co-workers would glance around, smile, and occasionally participate. They knew there was going to be a show.