Anger and Incompetence

A friend once told me that she never wanted to be in the situation where I was mad at her. Her logic was as follows: In all the time I have known you, I have never seen you angry at another person. In fact, you don’t seem to get mad or angry at people (although I’m often upset with people). Several other individuals present concurred, and stated that my lack of anger was probably a good thing as I possessed the power to be incredibly vindictive. As I reflected on the statement, I responded that I could only ever remember being angry at a person once in recent memory, and that all were correct concerning my desire for revenge. Since this conversation (about four years ago), I can recall two additional events where I was actually angry at someone. In the past 10 years, these three incidents are the only situations where I can actually recall being angry at another person. One was a circumstance in which someone said something about a member of my family, one was a circumstance in which someone who should have known better made a completely inappropriate comment that was offensive a large number of people (including myself), and the final one was upon learning that someone whom I trusted implicitly had betrayed a clearly private conversation. Although I had never fully considered it, I now recognize that one of the qualities I like best about myself is that I do not anger easily and only when justified.

However, I have recently become aware of a threat to my relative lack of anger to others that could potentially render this quality detrimental to me. The beast: INCOMPETENCE! If I were on Inside the Actor’s Studio, my response to James Lipton’s “What turns you off?” would be incompetence. Historically, my response to such individuals has been dismissal. After all, why tolerate incompetence? However, recent events have demonstrated that it is not always possible to escape incompetence (although not for lack of effort on my part). I currently have no choice but to maintain relationships with a handful of individuals whom I deem incompetent. Not only are these people trying my patience, but I have found myself on the verge of intense anger on numerous occasions. While this may seem understandable to many, it is a new experience for me, and one I am not quite certain how to handle. I wonder…am I becoming less tolerant of people as I age? Do I simply not possess the ability to work with certain types of people? Have I reached a point where my standards are so high that people cannot meet them? Am I setting people up for failure? As both a scholar of interpersonal communication and as a human being, I am troubled by these questions. I find myself replaying situations over and over again in the hope that I have somehow missed the slightest glimmer of ability in another. I offer more help than I should. I consult friends and colleagues, and yet, I still find myself on the verge of anger when I encounter incompetence. Will I leap from the precipice into full blown rage? Do I need to undertake some intense change? Will this experience lessen with time? How long with this progress? I find myself with more questions than answers. Yet, the fact remains – I detest incompetence!