Nothing humbles a micromanager faster than being publicly proven wrong.

So, what would you do if your boss insisted on “proofreading” every email that was sent, and then made you change your writing to include an obvious mistake?

Would you ignore her and use the correct word? Or would you hit send exactly as written and let her take the heat when someone called it out?

In the following story, one recruiter finds himself in this very situation and lets his boss’s own arrogance do the talking.

Here’s what happened.

Boss looked like a fool courtesy of me

I worked as a recruiter for a temp agency when I was young and fresh out of college.

The agency manager was a total micromanager and wanted a say in absolutely everything.

She micromanaged everyone so badly that she wanted to proofread any emails that any staff member was sending externally and be CCed on every single outgoing external email.

This manager literally wanted credit for everything.

One day, one of my coworkers received a response from an employer who gave some positive feedback about the email she wrote. Our manager made sure to reply to all emails, take credit for the email, and explained that she oversees all outgoing emails.

A few days later, in a staff meeting, she made a point of saying she should get credit for any feedback the agency receives since she proofreads everything.

The thing is, this manager was not well-spoken or smart, and she was not even a particularly good writer. I regularly spotted issues with her sentence structure and use of commas, but just didn’t say anything.

Even though her suggestion was wrong, he still used it.

One day, she’s proofreading one of my emails that would be going externally to an employer who pumped a lot of money into our agency.

I was stating in the email that I thought so-and-so was a great fit for their vacant position based on so-and-so’s past experience.

Miss Manager comes to my desk and tells me the email looks good, except it should read ‘passed experience.’

I told her that was incorrect, and she told me I was wrong and that she knew the difference between the two words.

I wasn’t in the mood to argue, so I wrote it as ‘passed experience’ and CCed Miss Manager on the email.

Suddenly, she wanted nothing to do with proofreading emails.

The employer wrote back and said that, as an employer who hires people to work on printed literature, they wanted to correct me and let me know it’s actually ‘past experience.’

So, I hit reply all, thanked them for the feedback, and explained that my manager values all feedback. Since she proofreads all outgoing emails, she was the one who insisted on writing ‘passed experience.’

The next day, she announced that she no longer wanted to proofread outgoing external emails and didn’t want to be CCed on them.

Put that witch in her place!

Yikes! It sounds like she had way too much time on her hands.

Let’s check out what the folks over at Reddit think about managers like this.

Here’s a funny thought.

It’s shocking that this person was a teacher.

According to this reader, he had to teach his boss the copy/paste function.

This reader doesn’t think that woman will ever forget this situation.

She had that coming!

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.