40 People Who Had Enough And Clapped Back At Authority Figures Share How It Went

Yes, but not at an IT job. 


I was much younger, early 20s, and a new guy got hired on as a boss at this home warranty company I worked at. He was in his mid 40s. He didn't like me. At all. He would make snarky comments at just about anything I said and on occasion would tell me "no one cares" when I'd bring up an internal issue that could be fixed.


So one day I learned over and opened one of his desk drawers and he was like "what are you doing?!" I said "just looking to see if you packed your metamucil today." He shut the drawer and said "don't go in there, you might find my d***o."


From then on we had one of the greatest working relationships I've ever had. He became a mentor to me and I'll never forget Jerry. .

Hehe. Yeah more than once. My favorite line was: “ I DON’T THINK I’LL BE LETTING YOU FIRE ME TODAY.” One boss had gotten too close to my face yelling and screaming spraying spit. I told him: “You need to back off before you get seriously hurt.” He backed off and I went back to work. About 30 min later I was called back to the office. I was thinking okay here goes, he’s had time to think about it and I’m history. He apologized for his behavior and asked me if we were good. I grinned and said: “Yeah, we’re good.”

I used to be a Mormon.

In High School, we had early-morning Seminary. This was like a bible study at 5:30 AM at the church building.

Anyway, the normal instructor was gone and this c**t was subbing.

Now, said c**t was really old fashioned. When we walked in, she would be standing in the front of the room by the chalkboard. Usually, we'll stand around and chat while we wait for everyone else to get there.

Not today. It was about 20 minutes before class started and 5 out of 20 students were there. She yelled 'SIT DOWN' and scared the living p**s out of all of us.

She does this about 3 more times until everyone is there. Once everyone was there, she asked how many of us had cell phones and iPods with us.

I raised my hand because I had my cell phone. 15 or so other students also raised their hands. She came around asking us to hand our devices to her. Once she had all of our devices, she walked up to the front and DROPPED them into a bucket, which I later learned broke my phone.

At this time in my life, I was starting to doubt the truth of the church. It happened that that day we were talking about sins. We talked about all the normal sins and then the topic of homosexuality came up.

At this time, I had fairly long hair and a necklace. Mind you, I was, and still am, completely straight.

Anyway, Miss C**t decided to make an example of me. She points me out, and says

"#name#, you look gay. Your hair is too long and you should not be wearing jewelry."

I lose my s**t. I stood up calmly, grabbed the desk and tipped it over, then walked to the front of the room to the cell phone tub. I picked up my cell phone and realized that the top was separated from the bottom (flip-phone). I throw my phone at her with a fair amount of force and it barely missed her head, slamming into the wall behind her.

I call her a f*****g b***h and try to walk out but she gets in my way. I throw her to the side kind of forcefully and walk out of the building. I didn't come back for 3 weeks.

It felt really d**n good. I have adrenaline pumping as I typed this. The satisfaction was amazing and I wish I could do it over again, this time pegging her square in the face with the phone.

Yes. My old manager used to bully me, shout, humiliate me, he creeped me out. I can only take so much grief then I have to have my say. I just shouted at him ‘STOP BULLYING ME!!’ lol, he replied angrily ‘Come to my office, NOW!!’ I followed him, still angry, went to his office, he was like a lamb to the slaughter, asked me what my problem was, told him he picked on me etc etc, anyway, came to a resolution, walked quietly back to my work. At lunchtime everyone wanted to know what happened in the office.

He still bullied me, but indirectly, his reputation spread, tons of people resigned, we had to cover the resigned employees work as well as our own, for no extra pay, I dug my heels in, I wanted him out. Told Head Office everything..he ended up resigning himself (I feel he had no choice).

Unfortunately, our current boss used to work with our old boss at another company….

Not my boss, but the director of our product engineering team. I actually did a lot more than talked back and blew up at him and went on a 5 minute cussing tirade in the middle of the office. We actually became decent colleagues after.

Story Time:

Due to a bad code release on his team’s part late afternoon before the IIS servers now had a memory leak and were crashing every 30-60 minutes. Of course none of his team could be found to help troubleshoot so I spent from 7 pm to 4 am having rolled back the product code and then was running manual reversion on nearly 3000 customer databases, having to identify and start with our high priority customers.

The next day he needed a report that only my team could generate, and since I was the interface between hosting and product, it was me. As I didn’t get it down the day before because all s**t was blowing up I came in at 10 so I could have the report by 11. He saw me before I could generate the report and started chewing me out talking about “how I worked for him”. Note, “somehow” even at 10 am he hadn’t read his email enough to know what I’d gone through the night before.

As he railed in to me I blew my top and just launched in to a tirade of cussing that would have made my drill sergeant from when I was younger so proud. After about 5ish minutes of telling him off and telling him that I did not in fact work for him, but was in a total different department and team, and it took going up to the CTO and then back down the org chart to connect us, I turned away, generated the report, emailed it to him, and then sent my actual boss a slack message of what happened.

My boss told me to get my a*s out of the office and go get some rest, as I’d worked nearly 20 hours straight with minimal breaks. The next day after I’d gotten some rest when I came in I apologized to the product engineering manager, very specifically for how I said things, but not for what was said and that he needed to treat me with respect. I’d never missed a deliverable and wasn’t about to start then.

I think between the apology, him finally realizing what I’d done the night before, completely solo, and the a*s reaming he got from my boss over it, we actually had a decent working relationship until I moved jobs.

Thsi is my band teachers first year teaching at a high school. We as tradition play a homecoming song while the candidates walk around the track during the homecoming football game. Our song we were playing didnt have a repeat, which has happened in the past, and he asked if we play it once. I raised my hand an explained that we usually put a repeat in and play it as a loop so it sounds like one long continuous song. He looks at me and ask me to come into his office, i was assuming he was going to as about the past. Instead he tells me i should never speak up in his class ever again.

-A little back story, he is notorious for not listening to students-

So I go off, explaining how he never takes the advice of anyone and that we waste our time doing stupid things (working on pre-game longer then half time show) and he says that's why our pre-game is so good. I then informed him no one gives a c**p about pre-game. I storm off. My dad got a text and him and I had a laugh about it.

Band teacher is still an a*s.

Worked at a home depot type place in a cargo bay. We would load large or heavy items into customers cars after they purchased them. I was in high-school at the time, and had worked there for 4 summers in a row. There were 5 managers, and each one would tell us to do things differently, and get pissed when we would follow other managers orders. It got old. My last day, I showed up at 7am, rolled up the doors and took a deep breath of fresh air. I then rolled both doors down and locked them with padlocks I took from the store. Flipped off the surveillance camera, threw the keys over the fence
into a vacant lot, and locked the door behind me.

I drove across the street. Parked. And watched one of my managers flip his s**t, then load about 300 cinder blocks into a truck while wearing a suit. No regrets.

>Have you guys ever talked back to your boss which made you have better work relationship with them?

He'd respect us less if we *didn't* talk back to him. We're expected to shoot down bad ideas - and help rebuild them as a workable solution.

I was working in another country as a SCUBA instructor. At the time I was the most experienced diver so I pretty much worked every day. One afternoon the boss told me I could have the next morning off. That night I went out and and really cut loose and had a bit of a drinking binge. That night a storm rolled in and the net morning I got a frantic call from a coworker telling me I was needed at work. I was super hung over so it took me about 30 minutes to get down to the dock. Our dive shop had a rather large Y shaped dock. The top planks of the dock were 2x6 that were put together in three board sections. These sections were just placed on the dock frame (so they could easily be removed if a storm came.) The large waves from the storm were rolling in and knocking these boards off into the ocean. Only one of the other instructors had bothered to come into work, so when i arrived my boss was VIVID. He saw me walking in and immediately started to yell at me, calling me lazy and basically any other thing he could think of. Being that I was really hung over and not even supposed to be in at work i just told him to Shut up. He kept yelling at me and I kept telling him to shut up. After my third time of telling him to shut up he screamed and then grabbed my neck and tried to strangle me. I also then began to try to strangle him and we both got tripped up and fell down. We were not willing to throw punches at each other so we just proceeded to roll around on the dock with waves crashing all around while banging each others heads on the dock. After a couple of minutes my boss gave up and stood up and said "I am sorry I just need help to get these planks out of the water and save the rest of the dock." I got up and said "No problem I will get in the water and try to save what is left." We saved the dock and my boss did apologize later in the day. In the end my buddy the only other instructor there said it was the funniest thing to see us wrestling with the dock crumbling around us.

Yes. Company brought me in because they thought their outside IT was doing a poor job. I was told to improve things.

About 6 months in I had implemented AD so we could move on some priorities. My boss at the time is yelling and screaming because I don't know someone's password. I let him yell for about two minutes staying calm then I'm your boss you do what I say!

I say:

Bill I don't need to know their password because I can change it whenever I want, I can give you access to their files, I can lock them out. You're screaming at me because you want to do something wrong, but you brought me in because you trusted me to do it right. So either you trust me and this never happens again or you can fire me right now and I'll have a nice stack of the same kind of people toy had before on your desk by the end of the day. Which one?

I worked there another two and a half years. Bill ended up loving AD and had shortcuts to all his favorite shared folders on his desktop.

Not an IT experience...

I lost my composure once and yelled back at my boss who had yelled at me in front of everybody because he did not like the way I made copies.

I was a young, wet-behind-the-ears temp, joining his team of all-female admin workers. They were always on pins and needles because he would just straight up berate them for the tiniest of things.

Well, after I yelled back at him (and stepped a bit closer to him, just to hear what he had to say to me in response 😉) he walked away. And guess what? There was no more yelling, moaning, b******g, or complaining to either the ladies nor to me for the remainder of my assignment! Wow, imagine that...

There was Peace and quiet in the Kingdom, productivity went up, assignments were submitted on-time, the ladies were no longer dreading to come to work, at least not for those last 11 days. In one sense, things did get "better" around there...

Mistake: losing my composure; I've dressed down 3 other teammates in life, but never yelled--it's counterproductive
Lesson: match assertiveness with level of disrespect; ooh, I'm a big believer in that. It may take me a few months to get my courage up, but when I go there, I GO THERE!
Outcome: Respect gained, but one way or another, I wouldn't have lasted long. I just don't do bullies well...

I was in the warehouse when my boss confronted me. He pulled me over to a mirror that was laying against the wall and berated me about it. He claimed it was a hazard and dangerous and it would cause a lawsuit against the company, and himself. He then transitioned to every problem, big and small; contained within the warehouse. He was putting all the blame on me and never once, offered a solution. After some time, fuming; I finally snapped at him and began to yell at him. I blew up because he was blaming me for problems that weren’t under my control, as I wasn’t the manager. He saw me as one and this irked me. I told him I wanted the promotion but he refused to give it to me. I yelled this at him and we got into a heated back and forth.

A few weeks later, I ended up getting that promotion, but by that time; I was done with the company and left soon thereafter.

I walked out on my first job after telling my boss to shove my performance review up her fat a*s.

I was due for a big raise because I had taken a management position (more responsibility) in a store farther from home (more gas and travel) with a .25 cent raise. Gas was cheaper then but still, every other manager was making 2-3 dollars more an hour. She said I would be getting that when my probation was over and it was time for my review.

I got my review and she basically got every employee to rat me out for a ten or fifteen cent raise. Most of the s**t was made up, didn't happen on my shift, or in some cases, no one even told me about it. There were a few issues that I was absolutely guilty of.

Long story short, they said I was going to get a 50 cent raise instead of the 2-3 dollar raise I was offered. She said it with such a smirk on her face that I just flipped out. I called her a f*****g liar and to shove it up her a*s.

Edit: How it turned out? I was out of a job for a few weeks. I got another job that paid less but I got tips that made up for it.

TL;DR: My boss was a b***h who tried to f**k me over.

I have always said my piece and never sugar-coated things in "business politically correct" ways. It's been something I've done ever since my first job. We don't have a "challenge with this new strategy". We have a "problem with people who won't do their d**n job properly, and here's three examples for you."

Surprisingly, it's been received well throughout my career with several bosses specifically calling it out as something they like.

There's an art to it though. You can't just let loose from the hip.

No, but as boss, I have had subordinates snap at me. Usually it wasn’t because I did something wrong or even questionable. In fact, it was something someone else had done. As boss, my concern was less about being yelled at by a frustrated but otherwise exceptional employee, and more about fixing the work environment so the task gets done. So we worked on the process, fixed the problem and went back to work. My subordinate apologized, and the yelling part forgotten.

Yes, and the room went silent after I lost my lid and aired grievances with my boss for keeping everyone late on a weekend because one person and one area’s work was not restocked and straightened for the following day. I was upset because I was running late for a movie I had pre-purchased and made time for based on my work schedule, which had a posted time instead of being marked as ‘close’. I was pissed so I said something.

Her jaw dropped—and if a pin did, you’d hear it. She was very apologetic. While counting cash, it was simply easier for her assume any remaining work would be finished if all hands were on deck.

I was a teenager, so, this movie I had a ticket to see was important!

When I was working as a host in a restaurant, I screamed at my manager in front a slew of customers because wanted me to host, clean off tables, and deliver drinks to tables at the same time. She fired me the next shift.

BEST PART: The GM of my restaurant was my best friend's dad. He ended up being the one to fire me. Made visiting my friend's house pretty awkward.

Oh yeah i have. and i probably do it way too much. i have what is known as an "authority problem"

the most recent one was about a year ago. the cops in my town are super d***s. after 11 pm they just assume you are intoxicated and will pull you over on the smallest most b******t of charges for an attempt at a DUI or catching you with some d***s. so i get done working at the bar, it's about 145 am, and head to my ex's house to pick up some of my stuff left on her porch. it was the shittiest night i had had in a long time. and i am turning right at a light and this cop follows me for two blocks and hits his lights just as i am signaling to get into the left turn lane. so i swerve to the right across the 3 empty lanes and slam on my brakes and get out of the car and ask the cop what the f**k he thinks he is doing. he tells me that i turned into the wrong lane. i explained to him that the road where i turned has no lanes for about 150 ft after the place where i turned onto it. and then i proceeded to yell at him for about 10 minutes about how i was sick of being pulled over every two weeks because i happened to be leaving a bar, which i work at, and it happens to be late at night. and that i just had a really bad night and his desire to get his numbers up for tickets or arrests or whatever was doing nothing more than making a bad night worse. and that given that i get pulled over about twice monthly for b******t in the hopes that the officer there at the time will get a DUI arrest means that i don't go near a car even if i had a single beer with dinner two hours ago. i expounded on all of the issues i had with the local police department's actions and policies.

when all was said and done, the officer that night never asked for my id or registration. never asked for proof of insurance. he never even asked my name. he just handed me his card and said, "look, i'm sorry that the police in this town have cause you this much stress and anxiety. i'm not trying to mess with you, i'm just trying to do my job. i understand your point of view and while it wasn't me who has harassed you so many time i'd like to apologize for my fellow officers actions. if there is anything i can do for you give me a call. oh, also, next time you get pulled over it might be better if you didn't swerve across three lanes and hop the curb in your effort to comply. other officers may not be as willing to hear you out as i have been. have a good night, drive safe."

and then he got into his car and drove away. i haven't really had any issues with the police in my town since then, but i still get pulled over regularly for leaving the bar late at night.

In high school i told a teacher to go f**k herself after she refused to admit she'd run my Calc midterm through the wrong like, scantron thing or whatever...think, my test was test A, she graded it as B, i got a 35 out of a hundred instead of like, a 90 or something. this was a big deal.

in college i told a professor that he should quit his job because he obviously didn't give a s**t about teaching and i was tired of basically paying him to be a pretentious a*****e who couldn't care less about actually teaching or the essence of what he taught. (philosophy teacher).

i told off another prof who made advances on my girlfriend (who had at this point asked me for help) by emailing him on his work email telling him to stop. he didn't, i forwarded every single message of theres, to him and the department head, including a small paragraph in which i outlined my favorite moments including "your nubile breasts". ya i guess when you're an "academic elitist" you become the most corny human being in the world. lol, nubile breasts.

yesterday i told a kid who walks into my spanish class half an hour late every day then talks the whole time, after he'd finished complaining that he doesn't learn anything, that he doesn't learn anything because he comes in half an hour late every day and talks the whole time and that he is "annoying as s**t", in front of my TA and then walked out of the elevator we were all in, after class, like a baller, putting my headphones on. ONE SENTENCE WIN.

The President of the company I worked had a banquet for the employees. There had been a movement of the employees to form a union. The president and the banquet told us that if we would form a union that he would give us an raise every six months and told us how much it would be.

Over two years we got the raise. When we received the next check no raise. I ask the boss where was the raise, he said he would ask the boss. The came back in a few minutes and told me the superintendent had forgot to turn it in, and that it would be on the next check recto active.

When we got the next check I told the boss he was a lying SOB.

The next night around mid night The superintendent came in around midnight. He sit in the office two hours before my boss came to me and said the superintendent wanted to talk to me.

He proceeded to start chewing me out I keep quiet and waited for him to finish. And then I told him that I didn’t mean to be disrespectful to him and apologized if I was being disrespectful and to please forgive me, but I thought he was a Lying SOB. And told him why I felt this way.

We set there for two hours while my boss ran the my bun divider machine.

I left the office with a raise, than what the president and promised.