I’ve been in that type of situation before, and unfortunately I have a tendency to cut people off and let them know who they are dealing with. I’ve always regretted blurting out “hey, you are talking to the author of that article” or whatever, instead of letting the person blather on. Your way is more satisfying.
I love Jerky. Sun Gold Teriyaki is my favorite!
Without knowing who’s in charge of who (are you co-workers? are you his superior? etc). It sounds somewhat passive aggressive (give the was it jerky or not choice, I’d say yes). Also, we don’t know what he thought you were doing. Its possible he thought you were trying to use and based on what he saw he thought you were using it incorrectly AND was simply trying to be helpful*. It would have been simple for you to say ‘I’m just grabbing a reading from this, but for the record, I’ve been training people on this machine for 10 years, you don’t have to worry about be’ with sort of a jokish/no big deal, tone in your voice.
But you not only let him run through the whole thing, you actually challenged him on certain aspects of it and now he probably kinda feels like an asshole.
If not too much time has passed and/or you haven’t seen/spoken to him since, my suggestion is that you approach him and say something along the lines of ‘hey, sorry about the other day I’ve been training people on the tool for years and you kinda caught me off guard when you started teaching me so I wanted to make sure people are still being taught properly’. Something like that will help to save face, for both of you. As of right now, he thinks you’re playing head games, depending on his work ethic, he could be one of those people that plays them back and that just ends up with a bad work environment and someone eventually quitting or getting fired. Best to clear the air, better to do before he thinks someone told you to do it.
*This happens to me from time to time. A new person will start working for us, but do to schedules, they might work for a week or two before we see each other and they’ll think I’m either new or a ‘regular’ employee and not someone that’s been their ‘forever’. It’s sometimes kind of funny when they say ‘oh, do that this way it’s how they want it’ and I have to be like ‘yeah, they is me’.
Not jerky; gnoitall and k9bfriender have it right.
If he had asked if you needed help and you had led him into the situation, you would be a jerk.
If, as you told it, he did not ask but just interrupted you, he was being a jerk and he continued being a jerk because it made him feel like a Big Man.
And then he further was pumping himself up by not just describing his good deed, but trying to describe how he prevented a bad deed too. He’s a jackass. Avoid him. This is someone who will fuck over anyone to get what he wants.
I almost always agree with Monstro completely. In this case, sounds like this guy was doing his job and knew his shit. You played him for a fool. You had an opportunity to admit your ruse to him before he told the story. You set him up to brag about it. And you set yourself up to brag about it. Which you did here. You both had every right to consider the situation a brag worthy moment. You didn’t need to make him look stupid but you did. Actually you made him look stupid twice. Maybe he was talking shit about you, but I’m not sure your narrative makes that clear. Seems to me that at most he may have been talking shit about a character you made up.
Yeah, I think it was a little jerky. But only because you expected this outcome, knowing you’d get praise and he’d be embarrassed. If you would have told him right after, you could have both laughed it off and maybe something positive might have come of it.
I think you were a little jerky, and jerky on purpose for minimal personal gain. That’s maybe the worst kind as I don’t think it looks as good on you as you think it does.
It’s totally possible that I missed the point and you were hoping that this guy would learn something about safety or proper use of tools. As I read it, you were trying to take him down a notch. So, you win a game only you were playing.
Dang it! I can never get the edit in time.
For what little it’s worth, if this guy needed to be taken down a peg, I think what you did was effective and possibly necessary. But maybe could have been handled without the second layer of embarrassment. Sometimes a jerk a needs that. Your story just didn’t make it clear that a second jerk was necessary. You apologized.
You know if what you did was cool or not. So you know what you need to do if anything.
- If you are in a position that has a legitimate work related reason to hear an unvarnished training pitch from someone on the work floor, like Safety Manager, Process Engineer or the like, then the first part was warranted and not jerky.
- If you were doing it merely to satisfy your curiosity around how closely to your method this random guy was trained, you wasted his time and yours. That is jerky on several levels.
- In either case, the fact that you did not tell him afterward why you had him walk through the training was jerky.
Them’s my opinions, and my opinions they’ll stay.
I say jerky. I loathe it when someone invades my workspace and isn’t polite enough to introduce themselves because they out-rank me. But then the other fellow in the OP didn’t sound averse to a bit of ranking himself.
I say slightly Jerky on all sides, but nothing to get too ruffled about.
Jerkyness on your part: misrepresenting yourself with the result of him looking foolish to the other coworker, and wasting his time.
Jerkyness on his part: providing unsolicited and slightly patronizing advice, although he may have meant well. Also talking behind your back about you to another coworker.
All in all it probably evens out. Might not hurt to go and talk to him offer an apology for leading him on, and explain why you did it to show there are no hard feelings.
I’m a tool. Expert!
Jerky. A better way for you to handle it would have been to say, “Yes! These model 7 frammistrons are a big improvement over the model 6. I hated having to manually adjust the weberstop on those.”
I don’t automatically assume that someone is being intrusive when they talk about something they do and they are proud of/excited about. Getting involved in a positive way is basic Carnegie. Turn the situation into one where both parties feel good afterwards.
Yes and yes!
For the record, I did apologize before I even started this thread.
Thanks for the honest answers so far guys. 
Given what started this, I don’t agree that he had any obligation to stop him from helping him. I think that this way is more likely to leave an impression.
I do think he could have done it differently, letting him know at some point, but that wasn’t the question. I don’t think that he has to do the most polite manner to not count as jerky. I testing him is perfectly fine if he is in a position over him, but a prank (at best) if he’s not. I expect to be tested by my superiors on these things without knowing that it’s a test.
I think the desired result is that the guy feels like a bit of an asshole. To me, what is most relevant is merely whether Grrr! is his superior in any way.
As for whether to apologize: I’ve always said that you should apologize when the results of your actions were not what you intended. Hurting his feelings wasn’t his intention, so he apologized. That alone means Grrr! was being a decent guy in my book.
Eh, I’d have probably done the same thing. But one of the people I work closest with calls me “McMeany” so what do I know. I’m also female and deal a lot with mansplaining. If some jackoff has to start telling me how something works, I’ll let him. Then I’ll do something that makes it obvious I’ve mastered whatever skill this dude was “helping” me “learn.” Derpoff.
I don’t think that you were a jerk. The other fellow could easily have politely introduced himself and asked something like “Hi, is there anything you need with that?” or something of that ilk. I’ve had enough “experts” try to teach me about things that I’m actually more expert on and there’s no graceful way out.
Not jerky, thought a little hilariously evil. The guy came in on an assumption that he didn’t even bother to verify before waving his skills in your face. And ended up with a healthy serving of egg on his. But of course he’s mad at you for toying with him, instead of thinking “Geez, I really came off looking like a jackass on that one”. Because in his mind, he was right.
Good on you for apologizing to him, but I don’t think you need to go out of your way to do anything else at this point. Water under the bridge, and more the fool him if he doesn’t see it the same way.
I’m of this opinion. I don’t think there’s anything jerky in the least that you did, and I’d be more than happy to have a boss like you (well, if I weren’t self-employed.)
And I kinda sorta had a similar thing happen to me about a decade and a half ago. I was working for a wedding photography studio, relatively new, with maybe 30 or so weddings under my belt at the time. But I had been assigned lead photographer pretty much since the beginning, so wasn’t used to role of second shooter. So when I got the contract, I didn’t even bother to read what role I was assigned in and I reflexively did all the lead shooter things: call the bride, discuss the day, call the second, coordinate coverage, etc.
I start with bridal prep, rush over to the church, and then meet the second photographer. I start talking to him and realize that something seemed a bit off. He was about 15-20 years older than me, looked completely in control and like he knew what he was doing, his gear and the way he held it reflected a seasoned professional, etc. This was not the usual type I get as second photographer. When we chat, I discover he is the chief photographer for Harpo Studios (Oprah Winfrey) and has something like 500 wedding under his belt. It only then dawns on me that HE was primary, and I was second. So I apologize, and he just laughs. When I ask him why he didn’t stop me he said something like, “oh, you were on a roll, and I just didn’t feel like interrupting you, since you had already made the contact with the bride and everything, and I knew you could handle the day.” I was briefly slightly embarrassed, but found the whole thing funny that this very successful and experienced photographer just let me run the show for a little bit. 
I turned over the reins to him at that point. Luckily, it also ended up being the best wedding shoot of my early career, but I laugh every time I think of my young 20-something self telling the industry veteran how the day was going to run and unfold, what to do as second, etc., and that he was good-natured and practical jokey enough to just let it ride.
I’d go with non-jerky, but maybe because I’ve also dealt with this situation. Having someone condescend to explain something to you when there’s no reason to believe you don’t understand what you’re doing is just obnoxious, and sometimes the easier path is to let them get their ‘helpful’ explanation done so you can actually finish what you’re doing.
My other instinct is to give a death glare and tell them I know and neither asked for nor needed help, which is probably jerkier.