Don't think you can do everyone else's job better

As a teacher, I would regularly get parents at teacher's conferences telling me how to teach. I remember one parent saying that her son could only learn through song and acting and so I was suppose to conduct my class only using songs and acting. In Spanish, I actually did do some of this but I wonder how his math teacher responded to that demand. These comments always came from parents who had no teaching experience nor experience learning a second language. And the comments were always unsolicited without getting any background information on what was actually occurring in the classroom. So they were far from realistic and far from useful. So many times I wanted to tell parents that I don't tell them how to do their jobs, so what makes them think they can tell me how to do mine.

So last night in the middle of the surprise snow storm, I was reminded of this sentiment. We were on the bus going no where because traffic was that backed up when a guy a few rows back started complaining about how the driver was stupid and criticizing his every move. Then my husband turns to me and tells me how we should have taken interstate because it has now dropped down to 30 minutes (compared with an hour and 9 minutes when we left). I really felt that this was another case of people trying to tell someone how to do their job without any background information or understanding of the decisions that were made.

And so it got me thinking of a client we had who always tried to tell the lawyers what they should be doing without any understanding of what was allowed by law and what would actually help their case. Another case of someone who thought he knew better than the person with experience and training in their line of work.