Every once in awhile, a worker-bee actually does get the better of a boss. For the purposes of this thread, the result of the exchange SHOULD NOT wind up with the employee being fired.
Here’s the best one I ever had first-hand knowledge of…
Back when I was working in radio, a penny-pinching station manager tried to bully the weekend news anchor (a skinny 18-year old college freshman) into clocking in right before the newscast, then clocking out immediately after, repeating the process for every newscast throughout the day.
With remarkable presence of mind, the kid said that would be okay, but he would only be able to report what was actually happening during that five minutes each hour.
The station manager was totally flummoxed, and never tried it again.
While in the publishing game as nightshift supervisor, our Winnipeg Art Department sent us a Christmas greeting, with a photo of the staff all wearing Santa hats posed around their tree.
I had my photoshop wizard guy, cut and paste the face of "Bubbles"from the Trailer Park Boys over their faces, and had him sloppily replace our city name over top of the sign. I sent the new version back at 3 a.m. - along with a forward to my boss.
I came in the next night with a blown-up copy of it plastered all over the office.
My boss thanked me and said it was the funniest thing he had seen in a long time.
I worked in the kitchen for a chain called Chi-Chis.
They paid good but were real slave drivers. The place opened in the summer and after a month or so, school was starting back up. The kitchen manager was making fun of us ‘school kids’. (we were mostly HS kids)
One thing they did was to clock in and out the tickets. So you could see how long it took to make the dinner.
Larry picked up a ticket and read loudly that the ticket took 40 minutes and that was way top long. I knew the order didn’t take that long and I walked up to him and took the ticket.
I then, very loudly read.
7:50 to 8:10 is 20 minutes.
I learned how to figure that out in school.
Even though there were reprisals, it was worth it.
At a morning meeting my manager complimented coworker “Anna’” because So-and-so had mentioned how courteous and professional and thorough Anna had been when he’d asked her a question the day before.
“Oh,” said Anna, “he was so clueless I assumed he was a vice president.”
Upon receiving his first paycheck at a new job, the employee noticed an attached notice advising him that his salary was not to be discussed among his coworkers.
His reply to the boss was: “Don’t worry, I’m just as ashamed of it as you are”.
My brother once did some handyman work for a wealthy older man. Before he started, they discussed payment. The old man said “How much is minimum wage nowdays?” My brother looked him square in the eye and said, “I don’t know, Bob. I’ve never worked for minimum wage before.” He got paid a fair amount.
As for me, I once worked for a doctor that could be quite condescending. He once asked me to do an orthostatic blood pressure check, and he added “That’s when you take it standing, sitting, and lying.” I looked at him all big-eyed and stupid and I asked, “How will I know if he’s lying?” I have to hand it to the doctor, though, he came back quickly with “You look to see if his fingers are crossed.”
