I just saw that hilarious “SENFELD” episode where George goes in to his boss and tells him off! He calls the bost an incompetent, idiot, etc. Later that weekend, George thinks better of it, and shows up for the Monday morning meeting, trying to make light of it all!
So, have you ever REALLY told your boss off? Did you regret it later? And, were you IMMEDIATEY fired?
Yup. I have. A couple of times. Usually it is with good reason.
The last time was over a “draft schedule” at my restaraunt. I told the manager that I wasn’t going to be able to make it on that day because I had other plans that couldn’t really be cancelled and I had planned it that way because it was my day off. He informed me that since there was a draft it superceded the normal schedule, and that I had to be there. I then proceded to tell him what I thought of the whole “draft” system and how much it sucked and that we have a static schedule for a reason and that if they were anticipating a rush of people on a certain night that they should have forseen this and scheduled more people to work instead of just telling the whole staff that they have to cancel their plans so that they can be there after really short notice. So he tells me that there are plenty of people there that would like to work a double shift and take mine, so I shouldn’t have any trouble getting it covered. I tell him that scheduling isn’t my responsibility and that he can just go ahead and take care of that little SNAFU by himself.
He did.
I still work there today 
I have often stood up to my bosses. I always try to “tell it like I see it” and rarely hesitate to say what is on my mind (good OR bad). It is very important to carefully choose your words when doing this however.
In my experience most superiors have gained respect for me for standing my ground when I felt the need to do so. As far as I am concerned, not standing up to your bosses will lead to them feeling that they can railroad you in any situation.
I did. My old boss fired one of the employees because…well.
He called her, at home, when she was sick as a dog. He bitched at her for about ten minutes straight about nothing she had anything to do with. She finally got sick of it and hung up on him. So he decided to fire her. So when I found out, I yelled at him, called him every name in the book, and quit instantly. The company folded shortly thereafter.
It was worth it just for the look on his face. I savor it to this day.
Not my direct boss, but a VP at my company who could easily have had me fired. In a meeting, he went off once about how some of my projects were running past deadline (neglecting to mention that they were late in large part because he kept redesigning things). I lost it and went off on him about it. Got congratulated by a couple other folks in the meeting, and never heard a word about my outburst from any of the higher-ups.
Yeah, I did it twice at the same job, and did not get fired.
I was the only one doing my job, I told them weeks in advance that I wanted to leave on time and not work the weekend. I had plans to make and I needed to leave at that time. One boss came in and droped something on my desk five mintues before I was going to leave and told me to do it. I told him off, still did it but told him off. I ended up being an hour late and it screwed up my entire time table for the weekend.
Another time when I was buying a house I was getting all new kitchen stuff. I had to be home at a certain time. Different boss tries the same crap. I left so they wouldn’t have to come back.
Same job I was eating lunch and they wanted to come in and talk to me about something. I told them, I’m f’ing eating, they kept right on talking to me. I didn’t get fired and they were going to hire me full time.
Yep…not just my boss…but the CEO of our entire company.
He had an awful temper and would scream and curse and get in your face if you made any type of mistake. People were absolutly terrified of him.
I made an error on a project, very minor, and I fixed it the same day with little cost/problems to the company.
CEO came in my office, got in my face, told me how idiotic the error was, how lucky I was I wasn’t fired, etc.
I had had it so I looked him square in the eyes and said, “Mr. Smith, my own FATHER doesn’t speak to me like this and I’ll be damned if you are going to either. The next time you raise your voice to me like this you will watch my happy little ass walk out of the door.”
He stormed out of my office. We didn’t speak for a few days then all was well and we are still good friends to this day even though I left the company 4 years ago.
When I worked as a placement counselor at a temp agency, I once told the boss I hated the temps, I hated the clients and I hated her. I totally didn’t get in trouble. In fact, she tried to get me promoted so I wouldn’t quit, she came to my wedding and gave me a lovely gift as well.
Once, several years ago when I worked for a printing company. I was still in college (a graphic design major at the time, though that changed before I graduated.) The boss of that company knew nothing about the printing business. He was the owner of a construction company. A small printing business in town had gone bankrupt, and he bought the property, including all the used printing equipment, and decided that this was his new business. He hired me as a graphic designer.
I was forbidden to touch the existing equipment (because he didn’t know how any of it worked.) I was given several small projects to do. Having nothing to do them with, I took them home and pieced them together as best I could with the tools I owned (very little, at that time).
The next day the boss took a look at them and went off about how awful they were. He told me it looked like a kid had done them (which was not true… they were not professional quality, but they were not that bad).
I fired back that I could not do professional grade work without access to professional grade equipment. He told me “well, you’re in college aren’t you? Don’t you have access to some equipment on campus?”
I told him that the equipment on campus was for use on valid school projects, not for propping up his business, and that I was not going to start hauling my projects to campus and trying to sneaky-do them while no one was looking.
As I recall he got pretty red in the face at about that point, but I left the building. And I left the company, too, shortly thereafter.
A good friend and former coworker of mine accidentally told off our boss at a meeting. We were working at a small daily newspaper at the time. She was also working for a temp agency and going to school, so naturally she was exhausted. She often took quick naps during breaks just to keep herself going.
When the news editors had a meeting one afternoon, the managing editor started complaining that certain projects that he assigned weren’t being completed on time. The first thought that popped into my friend’s head was “well if some moron would sift through all the crap on his desk and assign the projects sooner, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, would we?”
It wasn’t until she noticed everyone staring at her that she realized she’d used her out-loud voice.
Fortunately, she didn’t get fired. No one ever got fired from that place, no matter how much they deserved it.
I told off my supervisor once, back when I was waiting tables. He had let everyone off the floor but myself and one other waitress. I had warned him it was too early to cut everyone but noooo. I swear he did it just to spite me, he had some major superiority issues. We nicknamed him “Adolf”. Anhoo: right then, we got a rush. I’m talking like 10 tables walked in, on top of our existing 4 or so tables each. Instead of seating a couple and having the rest wait 5 or 10 minutes until we were caught up, he proceeded to seat everyone, and on top of that, attempted to put about 8 of the 10 in my section because the other waitress had a large party (lets just ignore the fact that the large party already had their freakin’ check).
I flat out told him “no.”
Well, more like "I’m not going to go through a real life waitressing nightmare so that you don’t have to look bad to those customers. You made the decsion to cut everyone, now you’ve got 4 choices. #1. You time seating and explain to all of those people why they have to wait. #2. You put some of the servers you just cut back on the floor. #3. You put on an apron and help us out. #4. You wait on all those tables your damn self after I walk out of here.
Heard through the grapevine that he tried to fire me after that but the owner wouldn’t let him (he asked me about it and I explained what happened, he was on my side). I quit shortly after (that’s when I started my “after college job”) and heard that he got fired a few months later.
Karma’s a bitch.
I have never bitched out my immediate boss in the sitcom-sense of “letting him have it”. let’s see…
a) As a FileMaker geek in the IT department of a huge international advertising company which was just a decent-sized speck in the eye of a megahuge conglomerate, I got tired of those stupid FWD: FWD: FWD: Dont’ open any email titled “How to give your cat a colonic”, it’s a VIRUS emails and started replying to all, citing the Snopes entry, and informing them that if folks didn’t quit warning everyone of things they did not understand (and which were wrong) instead of letting IT handle the matter of viruses, I would recommend that company computers be removed from them. Problem was, the fourth or fifth person I did it to was the CFO of the megahuge corporation that owned our company as an unimportant afterthought, and since I’d done a reply all it went to something like 0.37% of the world’s population. They weren’t real happy with me that day.
b) I yell back at my boss about FileMaker-centric issues all the time when he doesn’t get it. “No. No, that would be an incredibly short-sighted solution. That would make it inefficient and a month later everyone would be begging me to put it back to fix the performance problems.”
c) Eons and eons and eons ago I was a teenager seeking work of absolutely any kind and took a job cutting firewood with some contractor who was to drive us deep into the Natl Forest where he had a cutting permit. Very first (and only) day, I was to operate the gasoline-powered wedge machine to split up oversize logs and stumps. After he left at 10, I continued working and at 10:30 or so the damn thing jammed in a stump and nothing I could do would free it. I worked on it for hours with a manual sledge and wedge but he’d only left behind two manual wedges and soon they were both buried below the surface of the stupid wetwood stump. Gasoline splitter could be cranked but had no backout and would croak when I tried to engage it. Finally ran out of gas. Nothing else for me to do and I sat there all damn day long bored out of my skull and feeling inefficient and when he finally showed up he cussed and made it sound like I’d slacked off all day. An hour later he threw in the towel too and we left it there like that. Then his truck died and we had to hike out. He was in no shape to hike out and I kept walking ahead and singing songs and waiting for him to hobble along to catch up puffing and panting and then I’d walk on ahead singing again. He was seething but had nothing specific he could complain about. Served him right, I hadn’t done anything on purpose to make his damn splitter machine lock up!
I told my boss sweetly “You and I BOTH know you “arranged” the misunderstanding that got Mom fired.” And then I left.
I have been disciplined a couple times since then but she is VERY careful to make it appear valid. Maybe she thinks I have hard evidence against her… I don’t or it would have been used a LONG time ago…
The radio station I worked at years ago was sold to a new owner.
I had been doing mornings and was program director for 3 years. The new owner was a small man with a Napoleonic complex, and I was his perfect target, being 6’ 7".
He changed the format of our station. He moved me from mornings to evenings.
This after three surveys showed us as the number one station.
December 23, Boss called me into his office. Starts ranting at me that I had no idea what I was doing for the past three years, and that I was lucky I even had a job working for him. I asked him to please clarify, in that the previous three stations he had owned had went bankrupt (I had some great contacts in the business!).
This made him even more mad. In between his rants, I quietly told him exctly what I thought of him and his new format. I told him that if he wanted to have any chance of making it in that town that he would put me back in charge immediately and let me program the station back to the number 1 slot it held before he took over.
I’ll never forget his face and voice. His voice went up about three octaves, his face went bright red, and he told me to get my stuff and get out.
I gladly did so.
I was told later by my co-workers that they were standing outside the bosses door, cheering me on.
But now, here’s the kicker!
I had a date for New Year’s Eve (10 days later) that I had no intention of breaking. We went out, were having a wonderful time at the club, when the lead singer of the band stopped everything and told us that the dam 12 miles north of us was breaking and if you lived in towns on the other side of the dam, you’d better get a motel room that night.
My date and I went out to my car, where I turned on my ham radio and found out the local emergency group had ben activated. I checked in, told them I was taking my date home, and after I did so, I was assigned to watch a bridge over the river that the dam was located on.
Right across from the radio station transmitter.
A 25-30 foot wall of water came roaring down the river. Took out the bridge. And, as I watched from a safe distance, took out the tower and transmitter building and washed them down the river.
The next work day following the dam break, I called the owner. Told him that since I was the old chief engineer of the station, I’d like to offer any help I could in getting him back on the air. Remember I said I had contacts? I had already been in touch with a friend in San Diego who told me we could get a transmitter and long wire antenna up to us in about a week. I was going to offer my help.
But before I could offer my help, he went off on me again. The voice went up two octaves, I could picture the face getting red, and he told me he would never want ANY help from me, ever, because I was such an incompetant idiot.
I hung up, and he didn’t get back on the air for FOUR MONTHS!
Years later, I stopped in to see another friend who was working there, and the boss walked in. His hair had turned white, he had developed quite the pot belly, and he smoked what seemed to be 2 packs of cigarettes while I was there.
He just recently sold the station at a BIG loss to Clear Channel.
Serves the SOB right.
Yep. Twice. Well, technically I didn’t tell her off. I just raised my voice to her. She was really angry about something and was ranting at me for something (I didn’t do) and was being really ugly. I sat there for a few minutes and finally just said “Don’t yell at me. I don’t appreciate it when people yell at me.” Her eyes got really big and she apologized. I guess she didn’t realize what she was doing.
Then there was another time that she wanted something done and we didn’t do it exactly to her specifications. She was being very stubborn about it and I stood in the doorway of her office and yelled at her. I don’t remember what I said, but I know I said something about doing the best we would with the information we had at the time. I then stomped away and everyone was looking at me like I’d grown horns. She later told one of my co-workers that I’d hurt her feelings. I apologized for yelling (but not for speaking my mind) and we got over it.
I still work there. She loves me for some crazy reason and makes sure I get a nice raise every year. She tells me I’m not allowed to quit or transfer until after she retires - not that I’d ever leave. She’s known as the hard-ass at work and I guess she give me respect because I stand up to her when I have to.
I just wish I could do it without yelling.
Forgottenlore’s story frightens me. A very similar incident happened to my wife, a few years back, when she took a “part time” job working for a man who had just taken over a local printing business, and had big ideas about how he was going to run all the other local printers out of business.
The man had no idea how to run a print shop, and only a rudimentary idea of how to run a business. Over time, as the business began to hemmorhage red ink, he apparently forgot whatever he might have known of personnel management, as well, and simply began snarling at his employees to “find ways” to get jobs done, regardless of whether they had the tools or the materials, or not.
My wife is the kind of person who hates to complain… and tried… and caught a faceful from the boss on a few occasions for failing to pull miracles out of thin air. When a job needs to be printed, but there IS NO PAPER, what’s the employee supposed to do?
It didn’t help that this boss had a “Customer Is Always Right,” attitude, and allowed obnoxious customers to run roughshod over the staff. My wife will STILL tell stories about one customer who sat there, staring over her shoulder, for THREE DAYS as he more or less CONTINUALLY made changes and corrections to a job, AS SHE WAS TRYING TO DESIGN IT… while humming Christmas carols in her ear, off key.
The customer eventually wound up complaining about how the shop simply couldn’t do the job he wanted… and walked out with all the work my wife had done so far on his account… for free.
Boss seemed to think this was my wife’s fault, and bitched about it at length.
Wife snapped, informed the man what a colossal ass he was to not assemble some sort of contract with a customer, much less let the man walk out with three days worth of professional design work, totally free, and ended with a statement to the effect of how perhaps if he was so sure everything was HER fault, perhaps his business would run more smoothly without her…
…and she walked out.
His business went belly-up before two months had passed.
The only time I ever did anything similar was when a supervisor at the restaurant I worked at kept trying to plug me into “trouble spots,” because I had a good reputation, and because when I worked a shift, things that needed to get done got done.
I didn’t mind this, but told him that I could not close the store any longer, as I had eight o’clock college classes to attend, and could not make a point of leaving work at two AM when I had to be in class at eight. He agreed.
…and then kept assigning me to close. I tried talking to him, and he apologized, said he desperately needed me there that one night, wouldn’t happen again…
…and then he did it again. He apologized, begged me to cover, desperate, desperate, won’t ever do it again…
…and then made the mistake of posting the next week’s schedule before midnight. He had me closing the store nearly every night.
I went to his office. He took a look at me, got an “uh-oh,” look on his face, and tried to tell me how vital I was to the company, how desperately he needed me on shift…
“I am not able to do what you want me to do,” I said. “I ain’t gonna be there.”
“Look, if you want to keep this job…” (what happened to “need you desperately?”)
I didn’t say that. I just stood up, pulled off my apron, dropped my cap in his lap, told him what I thought of his idea of “personnel management,” amended the speech with, “I quit,” and walked out.
I understand he had trouble closing for MONTHS after that. Not to mention some health violations…
I know that feeling, Wang Ka. I switched to part-time at my old job to start taking classes full time. I didn’t have really early classes but still needed some time to get my school work done. I didn’t mind working closes some nights and a weekend night, I really wasn’t picky. Until they started assigning me the same three nights a week–Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, long closing shifts. Now, I had coursework to get done and I was also getting up around 8am and finishing my shifts around midnight. And I still had to come home and eat and, hopefully, study some.
And each closing day was long as hell, because I’d have to get up, drive to the train station, ride in to school, take my classes, ride back OUT here, drive to work, and then work til close. And usually, I’d have to do store cleanup and stuff in addition to helping customers, because they’d schedule a skeleton crew to close.
I asked. And asked. And asked. I don’t mind two nights in a row, but could we stop with three closes in a row? Of course! And nothing changed. And nothing changed. Finally, after about the eighth week, I wrote up an “I quit” letter and dropped it off and never showed up again.
Am I the only one wondering if standing up to your boss is uncommon 
My boss and I used to have major disagreements about a lot of things. Occasionally (but very rarely) it degenerated into shouting but mostly we would discuss an issue and that frequently resulted in me telling him he was wrong or vice-versa. One way or another we would come to an agreement on a solution. Isn’t that the way a business ought to work?
Yes, I once told my boss off in no uncertain terms. (I won’t bore you with the details: suffice it to say that he was a spineless, self-important, incompetent boob, and that’s pretty much what I told him. You wouldn’t like him). I did not get fired, because he was a married man with children and I knew which of my co-workers he was boinking (I told him that too).
All these restaurant stories jarred my calcified synapses. A couple years ago at our Pizza Hut we had this young snot of a shift manager. Okay most of them are young snots but this one was worse than most.
So one night he was following me around, as I was chatting with other staff memebers preparatory to settling down to get some real work done, chanting “Do preps. Do preps.” I finally had enough of it, I was heading to the prep area at the moment, I whirled around and yelled at him “Are you a fucking hemmorroid?
GET OFF MY ASS!!”
I got a round of applause from the other staff…