When suffering under a terrible boss, there usually isn’t much that you can do.

They’re in charge of you, and on top of that, they’re the one’s writing your checks!

But whenever someone can subtly but hilariously make their boss look like an absolute chump, it’s a moment of pure gold that makes the other 39 hours in the work week worth it.

When this user was tired of his boss blaming his team for his own mistakes, he showed him up in front of the executive board of the company, all with a smile on his face!

Check it out!

Embarrassing toxic boss in front of his employees and executives

A while ago I worked in the IS (information services) department for a fairly large company.

My boss at the time was a typical toxic middle manager. He’d take credit for his employees successes and blame them, and even write them up, for his own incompetence.

The director of another department was dissatisfied with the support of the IS department in general (due to my boss), but fortunately liked me in particular.

So thankfully for OP, he got to work for this director instead of the toxic manager!

So she worked out a deal where I’d work directly for her. I was so grateful, as she was smart and competent.

There were conditions, like I’d have to run certain things past Old Boss before I did something.

But there was an exception where New Boss could tell me to do something if she deemed it urgent/important, and then I’d inform Old Boss after the fact.

This particular clause came in handy during a meeting with both of OP’s bosses…

Well one day I was on a conference call with Old Boss, his team (or victims), his boss, a VP, and New Boss. New Boss said she urgently needed something done.

Well Old Boss always said something would take two weeks when he had no idea how long it would actually take. So he said it would take two weeks.

New Boss didn’t like that answer. So during the call, New Boss messaged me and asked how long it would take me to do it.

I replied it was a simple database update that would literally take me 30 seconds. She replied “do it.” So I ran the SQL update statement.

But when OP informed his old boss that the update was complete, instead of being happy it was done, he was furious!

Everyone was still discussing the issue when I interrupted that I had already fixed the issue.

Old Boss said, obviously irritated, “why did you ask me how long it would take if you’ve already done it?!”

I said, “I hadn’t already done it, I did it just now, it took 30 seconds.”

He just mumbled something and we went on with the call.

No one clapped and I wish I could say he was fired soon after, but he lasted a long time with the company.

But as I passed my former coworkers in the hall after the call, I got a few thumbs up and big smiles.

And he never advanced beyond middle management.

Nothing feels better than correcting someone who had been so condescending to you the entire time you worked under them, and making them look like an idiot doing it!

Every Redditor with an incompetent boss was totally living vicariously through OP.

And this user said that in all seriousness, no IT problem should take more than 5 minutes to solve!

And finally, this user commended OP on embarrassing his boss without looking like jerk.

Looks like its time to brush up on your SQL, 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.