Not all lessons are taught in classrooms — some happen on wild rivers with stubborn people and strong personalities.

So when a new raft guide was told he could only say “forward,” while on the raft.

But when the guide followed those instructions to the letter and exhausted the other rafters, the trainer learned he’d met his match.

Read on for the full story!

I can only call a forward? Ok, enjoy the extra work, then.

Kind of a silly one, but I have worked on and off as a raft guide at various points in my life and was recently retraining on a new river.

Day one, and I ended up with a trainer who I’d been warned was a bit of a hard ***.

This trainer’s word was pretty much law.

At the start of the day, he says, “OK, for the first half of the day, you can only call the forward command. No turns. No back paddling. You don’t get any other commands. Just forward.”

Fair enough.

So, we get on the river and I’m in the guide seat. I tell everyone to forward paddle.

The rest of the ride didn’t go as planned, though.

But the rest of the trip isn’t ready to go yet, so I spin us so we’re facing upstream and everyone continues to paddle forward.

After a while, we get too far upstream, so I spin us around again.

Of course, the trainer is quick to criticize.

The trainer finally turns to me and says, “You know, you don’t want to tire people out so much. You should pull over in the eddy and let people rest.”

So this raft guide knew exactly what to say next.

I simply responded, “Oh? Does that mean I am now allowed to use a command other than ‘forward’?”

He just smiled and said, “You can also have the stop command.”

He and I ended up getting along great the whole rest of the training.

In that moment, the student became the teacher.

What did Reddit think?

This commenter can’t help but be reminded of a song.

This commenter thinks back to the good ol’ days.

Some trainers may come off gruff but still give valuable advice.

The rule didn’t last long when the instructor finally saw just how impractical it was.

It’s amazing what one well-timed comeback can do.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.