Some managers are so confident they’re right, they’ll bulldoze over actual experts just to feel in charge.

What would you do if your boss insisted you follow instructions that made absolutely no sense, ones that would ruin the entire job?

Would you try to educate them?

Or would you let them learn the expensive way?

In the following story, one man finds himself in this exact scenario while laying flooring at a business.

Here’s how it went down.

“I want it like this, I’m the boss, you do it how I say.” Sure.

I work in flooring installation, commercial mostly, usually carpet or vinyl tiles, and have been doing this for 10 years now.

I got a work order to do a head office for a large developer.

It was carpet tile but with a pattern, lines, and a border.

I start installing and just as I get the first tiles out after laying the glue, the “big boss” comes out.

He says I’m doing it wrong.

The “big boss” wanted him to lay them in number order.

I was absolutely stunned.

I looked at him, looked back at the tiles I had just put down, looked at him again, and asked, “What?”

“Those numbers on the back of the tile are the sequence order, you need to follow the numbers.” He replied.

What he is talking about are God knows what, part #s, serial #s, lot #s?

They have nothing to do with installation, so if I actually followed whatever he was saying, it would look like a mess, not the intended pattern.

He tried to reason with the guy, but he wouldn’t listen.

I tried explaining this to him, but he wouldn’t have it.

He got frustrated and called the head office, who, in turn, called me and said to just do it how he wanted it.

So I did.

As I’m finishing up, he comes back, takes one look at it, and says, “I don’t like it.”

I smiled and said, “I don’t care; that’s how you wanted it.”

I packed my stuff up and left; he didn’t say another word to me.

They called him to come fix the mistake.

A few days later, I heard that he called the head office asking for someone else to come redo it the way I had originally intended to install it.

So the office sent me again, and I got paid to remove the work that I had just been paid to install, so I could get paid to install it again.

Needless to say, he didn’t come out to make small talk the second time.

Yikes! Maybe next time he’ll listen.

Let’s see how the people over at Reddit feel about this story.

Here’s a floor installer with the opposite experience.

Patterns do matter!

Most people trust professionals.

This person is confident in their own skills.

Talk about playing the system!

Getting paid three times for the same job is a pretty epic accomplishment!

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.