"Write it Down!"

[Anonymous]

Say you're in a meeting with your team and the General Manager. Typical, unproductive waste of time when there is almost nothig to discuss as we are dead denter of our slow season.

Bo, the general Manager says he came up with an idea to add a fee to our services. We say "Great, what is it?"

He turns to me as teh team led and says "Grab a pen and paper to write it down."

I say "I'm OK to remember it. What is it?"

He gets perturbed and says " Get a pen, Mark. And write it down."

I say "I'll remeber it, and if its hard to remember, I'll make notes on my phone."

Bob loses his sh*t and angrily pushes a pen and some scrap paper at me and angain demands that I write it down.

This time I just say no.

Awkward vibe n the room and soeone else says, "Well if that's it, I have things I nd to attend to."

A week later my mananger calls me with a complaint from Bob. I meet with them today.

Apologize or tell Bob I don't have dementia and don't need to be spoken to like a child in front of my team?

[Anonymous]

It sounds like you don’t really want to be there.

[Anonymous]

Congrats for standing up to someone who appears to be several rungs above you in a pointless pissing contest. Hopefully you bring something to the table that affords you job security.

[Anonymous]

That is a seriously toxic environment

[Anonymous]

Is Bob higher than you in the food chain? Why didn’t you just write it down? Why die on that stupid hill?

[Anonymous]

Both of you are toxic.

[Anonymous]

Really not sure why you didn’t right it down. He was an ass with his reaction, but I am pretty high up and have been asked by my boss to take notes at a meeting. I would never say no.

[Anonymous]

Bob’s a whack-a-doodle. I dunno, I might have had the same reaction in the situation. Though I would start polishing the resume and freshening up my LinkedIn profile if my manager felt the need to entertain a complaint about this.

[Anonymous]

The issue is you’re arguing with your boss in front of a bunch of colleagues. If either of you had an interpersonal skills you would have de-escalated with humor in the moment. But no you don’t just dismiss the boss in front of a group.

I’ve actually had this exact thing happen to me. I also don’t write things down. When happens is I get out my pen and write some things down and then never reference it after the meeting.

You’re wrong.

[Anonymous]

Lack of respect speaks a 1000 words. And doesn't fade from memory.

Are you always this cocky abd arrogant? Or just around Bob?

[Anonymous]

Seems as though you want to make life in the office difficult for you and for others. Your reaction seems immature. Your tantrum wasted everyone's time.

[Anonymous]

Sigh. Sadly, OP, when the boss is being arrogant and stupid, you don't have a lot of options.

[Anonymous]

Boss can take his own notes or needs to hire a secretary.

[Anonymous]

I think you either have to live with it or change it long term. Living with it means making your peace with working under these conditions, and changing it means finding a different position away from this guy.

Short term, you have to accept it, or you will probably be let go or otherwise sidelined pretty quickly. You can change it long term by leaving, but in the moment you have to show respect for the position even if the man is a prick. That means not going whole hog to contradict your superior publicly like that, although you can bring it up privately.

Either way, you probably need to focus on the long term, especially now.

[Anonymous]

Also, just to relay a similar story. We have structured interviews at my job (required). We recommend candidates write down the questions because they are specific and have multiple parts. About half don’t listen, but those are typically candidates who we don’t end up considering for other reasons.

But one time we had a top candidate who said they didn’t need to write them out and had a good memory. They didn’t do well on the interview. We liked this candidate so much overall though, that we did a second interview and again strongly recommended they right down the questions to make sure they got them right. They refused and flubbed the second interview. They later wrote back that it was their dream job and they were wondering what went wrong, because they thought they did well (worded more eloquently). All they had to do was write down the questions so they got the answers right.