People On Reddit Are Sharing The Best "You Have No Power Here" Moments (50 Stories)

A few years ago I interviewed for a job (in the US) that was labeled as a senior-level position, which is my level of experience in this field.

I go through 2 phone interviews and a stellar in-person interview. Shortly after the in-person interview, they call me and say they absolutely loved me and that I would be a great fit at the company. However, they thought I was "a little too green" (implying I was inexperienced) for the senior-level position, but lucky for me they have an opening for the junior-level position (at a salary decrease).

I kindly told them that the reason I applied to their job posting in the first place was because it was a senior-level position and that I wasn't going to take a step backwards in my career by taking a junior-level position since I had both the appropriate experience and the work history. I also let them know that trying to trick someone with senior-level experience into taking a junior-level position by stringing them along through interviews and a job offer was deceptive and unethical.

There was silence over the phone for a moment and then the interviewer said in an offended tone, "Well we've all had to make sacrifices for [company name]!" To which I replied, "You may have had to, but I don't make sacrifices for anyone."

Stunned silence.

Then the interviewer, who was so appalled that they didn't know what to say, replies, "Well ... Maybe you can think about it and I'll call you tomorrow to check in ..."

I said, "No thank you and please don't call me." and hung up the phone.

They do this a lot to young females like myself in a variety of industries. Don't take [crap] from anybody. Know your qualifications, believe in them, and tell abusers to [bug] right off. Your talents will be appreciated and paid for elsewhere, I promise you.

In my first apartment, my parents came to visit, and I said "F***!" when I hit my head on the open door of the freezer while standing up from grabbing something from the fridge.

My mother said "You can't talk like that in my hou..." and stopped midsentence.

I had a rough childhood with a drug addict father. My mom struggled to make ends meet and my first job was paying for the mortgage. After several months of working (again at my first job) I finally had some money to spend on myself and decided to get a computer and a decent internet connection. At the time the best internet I could buy as part of a dish combo package. I bought a dish and brought it home to install on the house. During this time my dad was still living at home with us but he was hardly there and my parents had all but separated at that point. My dad promptly asked me what I was doing putting a dish on his house. I let him know that I pay the mortgage now and I make the decisions on what we do with the house.

We had an HR lady who was extremely power hungry.

She is walking around with the president of the company who flew in from Japan. She rushes him through the warehouse. Just spits out “oh these are the warehouse guys we don’t have to stop and talk to them.”

He stops walks over and starts talking to me about my last vacation. How buying my house went. You could just see her fuming behind him as we talked for almost 45mins. I’ve had multiple meetings with him we knew each other really well.

I don’t think he liked her and drug it out on purpose but I was thrilled to see her just standing there bored as hell.

15 years ago, I worked for a company in Germany that was bought by a large US company. One of the first actions was a mandatory HR meeting. They used their US power point deck and guided us through the rules & regulations although directed by our local HR team to not do that: Here are some of the highlights:

We are not allowed to accept tickets for the Super Bowl. Utterly confusion - 90% of the people had never heard of the Super Bowl... a discussion about why we would want to watch that anyways, started.

We are not allowed to have relationship with anybody from a supplier or within the company. Uproar in the room:

This is against the German constitution - what you do in your free time is non of their business.

The discussion gets heated, everybody is discussing. The Americans on the line are very confused why....

The head of QA finally gets up and shouts "If I love that woman, nobody will prevent me from dating her".

People signed the sheet that they participated and read and understood the presentation with "with reservations"

People start discussing where to sign up for legal expenses insurance.

HR refrained from that day from having mandatory global HR meetings.

Management tried a couple of other stuff - at will employment (against the law - everybody has a contract), cutting vacation (against the law), canceling bank holidays (against the law). Make people work on vacation days (guess what, against the law) and a couple more.

It was a prime example of cultural ignorance and incredible funny...

New CEO came to our deparment on the 1st day of his work. He didn't have a pass card yet and a lower level employee told him that he can't enter without pass card. CEO got upset and ordered a worker to let him in, but the worker insisted: show me the pass card, or you're not entering.

Few days later this worker got a bonus.

Had an old boss who was a complete and total bastard. He was actually my boss’ boss, and wasn’t supposed to interact with us unless it was through our boss, but he just loved trying to make everyone under him squirm. The company had forced him to go to training twice because of how he spoke to people.

One day, I get a call at home from him and he just starts unloading- cursing, name-calling, insulting over some technical issue he just found out about. After a couple of minutes, I just looked at my phone and hung up on him.

The next day, I get called into a meeting with his boss, who basically wants to know who the [hell] I think I am hanging up on this guy.

I calmly explain that no one gets to yell at me on my time, in my home, on my phone. You have to wait for me to be on the clock to pay me for that privilege, and I’ll gladly take that money- If I’m busy being yelled at, I’m not busy with anything else.

Seemed to work.

Not sure if it fits but during an insanely busy weekend before Christmas, a Karen was complaining to every associate about how messy our store was. The manager had relieved the girl at the fitting room and was helping to hang stuff. Karen pulled her crap and was trying to make a point that we were messy and a horrible place to shop.

At the this manager told her roughly, "Ma'am we're messy at the moment because we're a popular store. And the biggest reason we're messy is because of woman like you who can't be bothered to pick up after themselves. It's not the associates making the mess. It's people like you. Your type have us outnumbered."

First time I actually witnessed someone deflate.

The guy that I'd gone on a few dates with introduced me to his parents, things went well, or so I thought.

he drives me home, we end up talking and drinking a few beers, I didn't want him on the road with any alcohol in his system, and I enjoyed his company, so we end up hanging out until 3am. His mom starts blowing up his phone, demanding that he comes home, so he drives himself home to find that he's been locked out of his house. His mom said that he can sleep outside, he shouldn't be spending time with someone like me (still don't know what she meant by that), and that i'm "just another stop on the pussy train". He tells her not to talk about me like that, to which she says "when you're under my roof, i'll say whatever i want about whoever i want!" so he picks up his phone, calls me, asks if he can stay at my place for a little while.

It's been seven years, we're engaged, have a dog, a cat, and a happy life.

i also plan on throwing some subtle train themes into the wedding/celebration after the end of the plague.

I have one that crosses with "I don't work here lady" a bit.

I have a job, but I will still do interviews every couple years. this means the script is flipped a bit. They have to convince me to work there.

Anyway I got the town early so I stopped at a bakery to get something to eat. the woman went in the back to get it, and this squat toad of a woman walks in, yells at me to get her order and then yells at me again for not getting up right away to serve her. When I point out that I do not in fact work there she goes off me about how important she is etc. We can skip the play by play.

I go the interview. Head of IT and the toad woman walks in. She has this evil grin on her face. I stop everything. I point at the toad woman and I say something like "I have seen how your managements treats people, and I have no interest in working for you" and I take my resume out his hands and walk out. The look on her face was priceless. Oh and he had walked in with a print of a resume, so I took his copy.

Felt great to do.

I work at a hotel. Its high end, so we often take the approach of just appeasing guests no matter what, so I frequently have to bite my tounge. However, we have a very desirable parking lot, and when people poach it we boot them. I love enforcing these because I don't have to bite my tongue or apologize, as they aren't guests. My favorite one was this:

Girl parks, and walks to neighbor hotel. Our gm happens to be in the lot, and says hey just fyi this is parking for x hotel, not z hotel. She proceeds to say f*** you, flips him off, and walks into neighbor hotel.

Gm calls me, and tells me. I giggle, grab the boot and slap it on her car. She comes back screaming and ranting. I tell her the cost is $200. She calls the police. The police ask "is this a private lot?" Yes. Ok then pay them. She refuses to pay and storms off. I get a call requesting the manager. I speak with them, its the girls mom. She is trying to say "oh my daughter didn't know, she was for a job interview" yada yada. I let her go on, and when she finally stops making excuses, I tell her that her daughter flipped off the gm, and there is no way the boot is coming off without payment. On top of that, i tell her when she pays she better not come in swearing or yelling, or the price goes up to 300. She hangs up, the daughter comes back and silently hands me 200, with a look of rage on her face. I've never been so internally giggly before.

I was about 12 years old, maybe younger. Often had been forced to stay with my Moms friends when she'd go out of town. The father was.... An abusive prick. He'd do things like make tomatoes every night for dinner knowing I absolutely hated them. For a week. Threw me in a pool when I was small and he knew I couldn't swim. Classic 70s "macho man". He literally tortured me every chance he'd get. As an aside if you're a kid and your own mother doesn't give a [crap] how people treat you, it's pretty much open season.

Anyway, we went out to dinner one night. Me, my Mom, her friends and their kids. We were leaving the restaurant. I don't remember what preceded it, but he said "go ahead tough guy. hit me as hard as you can right in the gut" thinking I wouldn't do it because I was scared of him.

But this was my moment and I knew it. He was a small man, 5'6". I was at least as tall as him already. And as he gave me his [crap] eating grin I pulled my fist back and [effing] belted him in the gut with EVERY ounce of strength I could muster.

He immediately doubled over. He was PISSED. He tried to turn it around on me, but his wife shut him up instantly. "You told him to do it. If you 'weren't ready' it's your fault, not his".

One of the most satisfying moments of my life. And one of the last times I had to endure mr Tough Guy.

A co-worker friend of mine was flying back from a sales conference in Vegas and he was able to upgrade to a first class seat. We had this b***h sales VP that was on the same flight - she was the snobby, entitled type with a full time nanny and giant McMansion in the suburbs, and she generally treated people who worked for her like servants.

She sees him in a first class seat as she is making her way to coach and asks him how he got that seat (he used points to upgrade). As people are getting settled in, she makes her way back up to the first class cabin and asks to speak with the lead flight attendant. She tells him that one of her underlings is sitting in first class, and that she needs to switch with him since she's higher on the corporate ladder.

The guy can't believe what he's hearing, but she won't take no for an answer. Finally he tells her she has to go back to her seat, or she will be escorted from the plane. She made a complete ass of herself in front of the whole first class cabin.

When my [crappy] father kicked me out of the house and then demanded he have access to my bank to "control my financial situation" and I got to tell him "you have no control over me anymore. You set me free when you kicked me out and now you can't do [anything]"

When I was in high school I worked at popular warehouse club selling computers on the weekends. I was hired by the store manager via referral of a friend. I loved computers and they thought I'd make a good salesman, so my job was to stay in the computer department and sell computers; nothing else.

Well, one of the shift managers didn't like that, and started insisted that I needed to go fold clothes for a while. As in, half my damn shift. I told him that the store manager had instructed me never to leave the technology department, but he insisted. This went on for several weeks.

The store manager showed up one weekend when both the power trippin shift manager and I were working. The store manager walks up with the shift manager close behind. Store manager slaps a stack of greenbar paper (this was a while ago) down onto a shelf and points to some highlighted numbers.

He looks at the shift manager and says, "Do you see this? This is our average technology sales numbers for the weeks you are on shift. See this number over here? This is our average technology sales numbers for weeks you are not. At this point, it would be more cost effective for me to simply fire you. What do you think of that solution?"

The guy stammers and stutters like a toddler caught bullying another kid on the playground. Fortunately, the dude wasn't fired, but the store manager made it clear that when I was on shift, I was not to leave the technology department unless I was on break or there was a fire in the store. That shift manager never said another word to me.

My parents were yelling at me and then my grandpa walks over and tells them both to sit the [hell] down. They both shut the [hell] up and sit their ass down on the couch. It was by far the most powerful thing I've ever seen him do lmao.

When I was working customer service for a restaurant delivery service (not unlike Door Dash) I had a customer send in a complaint about hair in their food. The hair was sitting on top of the food. I check their account, and they had ONE order on their account, which is a red flag.

I check their phone number and find multiple accounts, each other 1-2 orders, ALL of them complaining about hair in the food. I deny a refund because the customer has actually used the same identical photo for the last order since they ordered the same thing. The customer tries to argue with me, threaten to never use the service again, typical stuff that they always say.

Eventually the customer gives up and ends the call, then immediately tries again. I get the support request. See who it is, then deny the refund again. She ends the call, then tries again. The person behind me gets the call. I tap the person on the shoulder and show them what I pulled up on my screen and that person denies the refund.

The next day she calls back and tries again and is outside of the refund window, so the customer demands to speak to a supervisor.

The supervisor bans her from the service for multiple fraudulent refund requests.

So my uncle is a deputy sheriff, and one time he was at an airport talking to my aunt over the phone in Spanish. Once he got done with his call some nearby Karen that overheard him went up to him and started demanding to see his green card (uncle has an accent too so you can tell he's wasn't born in the US). Uncle decides to [mess] with her and tells her he doesn't know what a green card is and has never heard of one. She gets more pissed and keeps demanding to see it. He messes with her some more then eventually he goes "Well I don't got a green card but I got this" then takes out his wallet and shows her his badge. She immediately walked away while my uncle laughed his ass off.

I wasn’t good at returning library books when I was a kid. I got lectured by my school librarian about it a lot.

Fast forward twenty years and I’m a supervisor at the local public library and my former now retired school librarian goes there. One day I see her sneaking around the front desk instead of coming back to say hi to me and I immediately figure something’s up. I go up to say hi and she acts exasperated and tells me she was trying to avoid me because she had overdue books.

So I put on my reading glasses, pulled them down over my nose, and delivered the same lecture she’d given me countless times about being responsible and turning in books on time.

This is a bit silly, but gave me a great feeling of satisfaction. Due to the bad economy and poor money management, my parents have moved into the spare room of the house my husband and I bought a year ago. Things are mostly smooth, tho I’m not the closest to them for several reasons I won’t go into here.

The other evening I was out gardening (because it’s hot during the day and we have the luck of having a streetlight right next to our front yard, keeping it pretty well illuminated even after sundown, I mostly garden at night), and I thought I had gotten the hose twisted, as it kept getting stuck. This went on for a bit, when I realized that it wasn’t stuck, but being pulled. I looked into the dim area just past the illumination of the street light and spied my father, crouched over and tugging the hose. Well I did the only reasonable thing to do, and I sprayed him. He yelled and ran inside with me chasing.

Once he got inside he made a face and goes “You can’t get me now! I’m inside!!” In that father-to-daughter-don’t-you-make-a-mess tone of voice.

I readied my hose, looked him in the eye and said, “It’s my house.” And just let loose with the hose. He was soaked. Worth cleaning up the mess for that moment of true fear in his eyes.