Imagine doing your job when someone who is not your boss misunderstands and thinks they are your boss. If they yelled at you and told you what to do, would you listen to them or make it very clear that you don’t have to do what they say?

In this story, one service technician is in this exact situation. He’s working directly for the owners, but the construction foreman claims to be his boss.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

grumpy construction contractor yells at me cause he be power trippin.

So I work a job as a service technician, and I went to a new building that needed some warranty work done.

It had been officially handed over to the owners, which is a hotel.

The contractors were still running about doing deficiencies and odds and ends, but the hotel staff was on site training and such.

I used to work for construction companies all the time, and I hated it because of the semantics of it all. They would be a stickler for rules inside the property at all times, but when it suited them, they would bend the rules. Hate that.

He decided to prop a door open.

Anyhow, this building had a door close to where I was working and I propped it open to go to my truck, maybe 20 feet from the door itself, a five second walk.

First contractor, head honcho on site, comes out and sees me on the phone out there and asks if I propped the door open.

The thing is, there was another door propped open just on the other end of the hallway, but it lead to a loading bay away from the street, it was okay to have that one open because there was a worker there. Semantics.

I said, “yes just loading tools right now but I don’t wanna walk all the way around the building as I have a lot of tools to bring in.”

The guy was nice about it.

This guy was reasonable and he said, “sure son, not a problem just please remember to close the door, we don’t want a hooligan coming and stealing a TV or something.”

Aight no problem, I can do this for you. told him I’m not just a labourer, who have the reputation for not being the smartest of people, but I’m a decently smart technician in a complicated trade.

He laughs and goes alright, that makes me feel better. Plus he called me son, so that was nice.

he says, “alright, as long as you’re in sight of that door and you aren’t walking away you can prop it open.”

But the second in command wasn’t as nice.

Cut to maybe ten minutes later and I’m on the phone outside (no reception in the building), in clear view of the door, and his sidekick foreman guy is there, young dude, small tiny guy, who tried hella hard to compensate. I could hear the way he was talking to his employees the dudes a jerk.

I come inside as he’s walking towards me and he goes, “HEY! DONT PROP THAT DOOR OPEN! GOT IT?”

I had time today, I didn’t like being yelled at, so I simply said, “I’m right here, don’t worry no one’s getting in, spoke with your boss he said it’s cool.”

He stops, all bewildered and such and responds with, “DO NOT OPEN THAT DOOR AGAIN.”

The guy makes the wrong assumption.

I asked him why he was yelling, and he goes, “Hey, you listen to me when you’re on this site do you understand?? I’m the boss and I don’t want you questioning me again.”

This is where I goofed, I wasn’t wearing my company shirt cause it was hot in the room I was working in, I was a crawlspace above a kitchen, just had on a tee-shirt.

I simply looked at that guy and said, “A) don’t yell at me or speak to me like that again, B) I’m here on behest of the owners, I do not work for you guys in any shape or form. If you have a problem with me go run to your boss, or go to the owners and go tattle on me.”

He felt very satisfied with the guy’s reaction.

He stopped and tried to say something, but you know when you’ve got someone dead to rights and they kinda just try to say something? Exactly this.

This guy didn’t know what to do at all. He eventually just walked away and I chuckled to myself.

That was a great feeling. Where you don’t answer to someone, when you don’t represent the company to them. They can’t say anything to you, you’re working for the owners directly, and it’s not gonna reflect negatively on your company to say hey don’t yell at me.

I swear some peoples lives suck so much that this is how the feel in control of your lives.

Some people just like to act all powerful when they’re really not. It was great that he put him in his place.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

One person is reminded of a quote.

A general contractor weighs in.

Another person shares a story about his dad and a mall cop.

Some people don’t have as much power as they think they do.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a cashier who was on break when she was physically dragged back to the register by a customer.