"Years ago, I had a military sales manager who worked for me, a fellow from the Deep South, who was also a lieutenant commander in naval intelligence, serving in a unit of the Naval Reserves in New Orleans. Within our pharmaceutical, company, this very bright and experienced manager was responsible for government sales for the entire southeastern U.S. One morning, we made a call on a Navy procurement office in Pensacola where a civilian bureaucrat we'd not previously dealt with treated us with near contempt, as if we were a pair of uninformed morons who had no idea of what we were doing. He was clearly trying to hide behind the complexities of the military procurement system to avoid responsibility for approving the large order we sought.
I was tempted to interrupt this patronizing fool several times to tell him we were both quite experienced in military sales procedures but my guy just winked at me and kept on acting as if this were all brand new to him and this imperious bureaucrat was the font of all knowledge. His frequent "wows" and "gees" and comments like, "I didn't know that!" and "So that's how you do it, huh?" just fed the ego of this insufferable paper-pusher."
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