Questions best left unasked, things best left unsaid

Just before leaving work last Friday, I sent an email to my colleagues to notify them of a job coming through in which Things Might Go Wrong^TM. It was a standard head's-up with absolutely zero need to respond.

Of course, the Special Snowflake in the group just has to chime in.

I come in to work this morning, open Outlook, and find not one, but two emails from Special Snowflake, the first going into laborious detail about why the job could be considered to Go Wrong^TM but also how it most assuredly would not, despite collective historical evidence to the contrary.  Special Snowflake cites the "classic journal paper" by hoity-toity So-and-So with all the condescending tone of someone who doesn't realize that there are more classic journal papers by hoity-toity So-and-Sos that an octopus could shake a tentacle at, and anyway, that field of study is not my field of study, not by a long shot, so why the fuck would anyone assume that I'd have read it in the first place?

Somewhere in the second paragraph of what would turn out to be a three-pager-if-printed email, my eyes glazed over and I filed the email appropriately.

The second email from Special Snowflake was a follow up from the first, with corollary but unsubstantiated information for an experiment that was performed Some Time Ago But Unbeknownst To Everyone.  "This is why the job would not Go Wrong^TM" the email states, "Because I had the foresight to run an experiment to prove that everything is fine and our methods are adequate to the task."

Special Snowflake appears to forget the number one rule of all Scientists, which is, Prove it with hard data as opposed to Trust me.  I'm sorry, but the last time a PhD told me, "Trust me, I know what I'm doing," over my very streneous objections that Chemistry doesn't work like that, you bloody nincompoop, he blew up a hot plate, melted expensive Teflonware, and the otherwise-inert fumehood custom-built with fire-proof and chemical-proof substances caught fire.  Many years later, one of my colleagues is still jumpy whenever he hears a car backfire.

Special Snowflake's Trust me isn't on the same scale as stupidly mixing together the wrong compounds in exactly the right ratios and making an explosive version of Greek Fire, but it isn't the first time that he naysays whatever anyone says to tell them that they're wrong while he's right, and it gets really freaking tiresome.

(I guarantee you, when we get the final results, Things Will Have Gone Wrong^TM.)

I didn't make it far into the second email -- which would've been six pages if I wanted to print it, which I didn't -- before I buried my face in my hands and moaned, "Why did I even say anything?"

A colleague (fortunately, not Special Snowflake) happened to walk by my office just as I said that.  When I dropped my hands to my desk, it was to see him in hysterics.  I had to wait a few minutes for him to calm down long enough to answer my grumpy "What's wrong with you?"

"You-- you-- Fuck, I've got to get a tape recorder and carry it with me at all times, because only you could manage to project despairing resignation like that!"

I looked from him to my computer screen, at the third email that just came in from Special Snowflake.  It includes an attachment -- a copy of the "classic journal paper" by hoity-toity So-and-So that Special Snowflake just tracked down.

"Yep.  Despairing resignation," I said.  "That's exactly how I feel right now."