It’s not advisable to tell people to follow your instructions to the letter if you also want them to infer other things.

That’s what legal folks call a loophole.

And taking advantage of a loophole is satisfying when you have a boss who is a tyrant.

At least it was for the person in this story. Keep reading to see what I mean.

I ignore customers… because the boss said so

After graduating college, I worked for about 6 months as a cashier at a local branch of a chain sandwich shop.

Customers were nice. Even my bosses were pretty great, except for one.

During our shifts, each employee had a certain section of the store they were assigned to keep clean in addition to their duties.

This jerk boss would just say things to me like “I’m really busy right now, could you clean the patio?”, which was fine.

Part of the job description stated that if you had free time and the manager asked you to do something extra, you did it. He was well within his rights.

But one day he suddenly started asking me why I was shirking my duties by not keeping the patio clean. After all, the patio was part of my section.

But wait! An opportunity arises.

It wasn’t and never had been.

Plus, I was constantly having to run back and forth between the patio and the register, which confused customers and made it hard to get any actual work done on the patio.

Several customers needed tending to, so this jerk had to do this part of my job because I was too busy doing his.

I finished cleaning the patio and came inside.

Here comes the moment OP will savor forever.

The Jerk immediately tore into me, asking where I had been, why wasn’t I at the counter, couldn’t I see there were customers?

I put on my most innocent smile. “But you told me not to come back inside until I’d finished cleaning the patio.

I assumed that meant you would take care of serving customers, since I couldn’t possibly be two places at the same time.”

Seeing the momentary flash of panic in his eyes as he realized his “do as I say no excuses” policy had backfired had me giddy for the rest of the day.

Here’s what people are saying.

Haha I don’t like drama, so I’d find that nerve wracking, but I appreciate the sentiment.

Isn’t it delicious?! Better than a fine wine.

Exactly. It’s bad for business in every way. Ego is an enemy to business growth and sustainability.

I do, too! It’s pure insecurity.

Exactly. Classic case of jealousy and a lack of accountability. Remind yourself that it has nothing to do with you.

Get another job. Holy toxic boss!

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.