I'm reading this entire thread and just sort of holding my head and groaning at the way this is all making me think of my mother and sister. The observations of everyone are spot-on.
I have a difficult relationship with my mother. She's dogmatic in her approach and her views are rigid. She's judgemental, closed to new information, and refuses to admit that she might be wrong about anything. To her, all people with facial piercings are Bad People and they're all oversexed drug-users. The absolutes she assigns are crushing.
I can tell her something 'til I'm blue in the face and she'll ignore me and brush it off as though my words were like a wave breaking against the rocks, but the moment she hears it from a "specialist" she's all excited about this new idea she discovered -- when I had been telling her this thing for YEARS. I get so angry when this happens and I'll point out that "Uh, you know, I've been telling you this," but she'll just roll her eyes and belittle my statement somehow. My insights are often spot-on but she completely invalidates any knowledge I have because I'm the child and I can't possibly know anything.
She's kept me reduced to the level of a spoilt teenager in her eyes. If I display any feelings or express that I'm upset at something she's done, she'll call me a drama queen and dismiss everything I have to say. The more upset I get over the fact that she is not listening to me, the more she takes this as proof that I'm a drama queen. The fact that I am not as successful as she THINKS I should be at 26 does not mean that I am immature or that I need coddling, but if I ask for help she views it as proof that I can't do anything on my own. Her verbal pats on the head are intensely insulting.
I was always an extension of her. She would be very sensitive and ashamed if I did anything outside of the norm, or outside of her own "proven methods," because I was a direct reflection upon her and my family, as though we were the damn Borg. She was always more concerned with perception than content. She'd rather pretty up the front yard than clean the house interior because people see her yard everytime they drive by. We'd be living in such clutter that we were constantly having to step over things but damnit, that front yard looked nice.
She plays up her prestige and connections to where she's on the verge of lying. She wants everything that has to do with her to be "more". Smarter kids, more successful husband, better house, better everything, whether her stuff is actually better or not. I tested with a high IQ as a child and rather than just be happy that she had a smart daughter and give me extra support in school, she pulled me out and enrolled me in college when I was 11. If my 13 year old sister could do it then obviously I could too because we were both her daughters. Then, she went around boasting to everyone that her 11 year old was in college and it made her feel so good that everyone was so impressed. When I couldn't do the work, not because I couldn't but because I was an 11 year old in college and the stress was making me break down and become dysfunctional, she did my homework for me to make sure I passed my classes so she could enroll me in another semester, and all the while she kept talking about what an impressive daughter she had. She even made me run for Student Body Secretary because there was no one else running and I would have won regardless of my ability to to the job, again because she enjoyed that she got to tell people that not only was her daughter in college, she was on the student body too! At 12 years old! She just had to keep up the lie because my failure would have been a blow to her pride because she would have had to tell people that no, I wasn't a genius, I was just another confused and fucked up teenager in high school. When I finally put my foot down and demanded that they enroll me in NORMAL high school for NORMAL kids, it was like I stomped all over her ego.
I've noticed this behavior in all of the ESTJ women I've known. They have an over-blown and often false self-perception and will play up their market value as though they're something big and impressive when they're really no more impressive than average. I know a woman who calls herself an artist and sells her knitting wares at absolutely ridiculous prices when in fact her artwork looks like badly drawn anime fanart and I always spot dropped stitches and pattern mistakes in her knitting that a person with only moderate skill would make. But if you trust what she says about her stuff, she is the best thing since ever.
I worked for an ESTJ for about a year. Everyone absolutely hated him and he made everyone's job miserable for all of the reasons people have already stated. My god, how I hated that man and what he put me through.
To the ESTJs getting upset by all the negative feedback -- instead of calling us mean and telling us that we should be nice because our perceptions of ESTJs are obviously wrong, maybe you should wonder why SO MANY PEOPLE have this exact same opinion. So many people have such bad experiences with ESTJs because SO MANY ESTJs are like this. If you read through all of this and you don't believe you display any of these characteristics, you're either not seeing yourself OR you are the exception to the rule when it comes to your type.